AWECS.org  ???

Predictions   (may be like putting a wing at the end of a string; is the bridle and resistive system arranged so that the wing flies? or not?)

We add a second kite that seems to be a bit more known: 

I agree.

 Gabor and Doug, 

Out of so many possibilities to do AWE now, in simple ways, why do people endlessly come up with such complicated scenarios?
Sure just build a special airport, special automated mutually-tetherd gliders with onboard apparatus to extract power, ways to beam the power to the ground... Like Wayne German's original idea that monopolized the first world AWE conference?

What is really at play here? Laziness.
As long as your idea is too complicated or futuristic to ever build, as long as the economics would never favor building it, you can go on skipping through fantasy-land, talking like a genius yet never building anything that works. Building things that work is HARD WORK. Building things that run for years without service and LAST is even MORE hard work. Nobody likes hard work. So it's easier to talk endlessly about things that will never be built. Things that are so unlikely that nobody would ever suggest that you build it. Things that are so far over most peoples' heads they can only blink uncomprehendingly, or nod in polite feigned agreement, and then everybody moves on.
:)
Doug S.

Let's say airborne wind energy really IS the future of wind energy.
In that case, you will want a domain like AWEA.org for the American Wind Energy Association. The word "airborne" will be unnecessary, since most or all wind turbines will be airborne. That will be somewhat redundant, like saying "airborne airplane" or "airline using airplanes".
The domain you will want will be WWEA.org which I registered years ago in anticipation of forming the world wind energy association. There is now a group calling themselves that, which e-mails me regularly. They also seem to be a bunch of amateurs, not really involved with wind energy at all (sound familiar?) with no funding to buy the requisite domain.
Anyway I suggest if we were to call it the world wind energy association, I have WWEA.org.
Or another domain I own is www.flyingwindturbine.com
:)
Doug Selsam
http://www.wwea.org
http://www.flyingwindturbine.com

Noted, Doug.
Thanks for the time to come.
Higher still.
JohnO
AWEIA International

---

 

Similarly, the forum coin will be spent handling energy transmission. 

Doug, 

Yeah Gabor, congratulations on whatever you have achieved in AWE as well. :) The history of wind energy fantasy is full of crazy ideas by people from outside the field that refuse to ever actually enter the field, yet they can always tell us how to do it better. My viewpoint comes from making stuff that works. Yup, if it's to complicated, it is too expensive, with too many failure points. :)

So the key to AWE will be to figure out the best placement of kites in a kite window, right? OK I think I'm catching on. It's all about kite placement. Place your kites right and you are making lots of electricity.
Every time I think I know where my kite window is, the wind shafts direction. Yesterday's kite window is today's safe place to stand. Every time I try to fly a kite it quickly gets too windy and I am lucky to pull it down before it rips apart. By the way I think I may have a workable idea for how a Mothra could make significant amounts of power.

Now that the kite has departed from the regions of toydom,
and has important functions to perform in the service of mankind, ...

"kite or captive aëroplane"

1903, Frederick Walker, Civil Engineer

Walker in 1903 in his book on practical kites:

Yes it is interesting how humanity almost exclusively duplicates what others do. It's very rare for anyone to do anything new. Even more rare that something new turns out to be advantageous. Example: ancient Egypt had ships, but they never made it to Madagascar. During 2 million years of human habitation, within 200 miles of Madagascar, nobody ever traveled to and settled the small continent-sized island. How is that possible? About 1000 years ago Indonesians sailed canoes all the way from the Pacific, past India, to the coat of Africa, and discovered the California-sized island of Madagascar that had always been uninhabited, as proved by giant flightless birds, that laid giant omelettes - er um I mean eggs, and were not afraid of people, so the Indonesian explorers could walk up to them and kill them. Of course being in touch with nature, as all primitive societies are (you've read that, right?) they killed ALL the birds in one year and did not save even one. Well what the heeck. But the real question is, with the highly developed civilization of India being closer, and with the continent of Africa with all of its ancient cultures even closer still, almost within swimming distance, how is it possible that nobody ever sailed there, if mankind is naturally "intelligent" or even the least bit industrious or inquisitive? Or anything? I can't imagine a civilization not sailing 200 miles off their own coast for 2 million years, can you?

How is it possible that mankind carried things by hand for those same 2 million years until suddenly the wheel emerged? What was wrong with the brains of the people who had come before, that they could not envision a wheel and make it happen? As I contemplate these questions, it makes me wonder: Is mankind truly "intelligent" at all? Or do we insist on flattering ourselves while most of us exhibit zero or near-zero intelligence almost 100% of the time? What this guy is implying should be music Dave S.' ears: Because he flies kites and talks about AWE a lot, by the standards of this statemnt from 1903, Dave S. is responsible for 90% of all AWE progress just by flying a kite even if he never plays any other role in AWE except troublemaker-in-chief or as the AWE welcoming committee for when the richest people in the world buy failing AWE companies.

Today the "smart people" advocate 100 mph trains. Why? At 200 mph, are the rails needed for support of the weight, or for guidance of the cars? The fact is at 200 MPH you are way better off in the sky than on the ground. Not even NEAR the ground, let alone ON the ground. Hello! At 200 mph, support is best done by the air, and guidance is best done by computer and GPS. At 200 mph, tracks are just a way to make sure it eventually crashes, like you keep hearing about in the news. But mankind, having no intelligence whatsoever, cannot fathom this. man has seen a choo-choo tarin and cannot let go of it at any speed. Cannot let go of the tracks except to make them maglev. Wow a billion dollars a mile then it crashes.

Yes it does not surprise me that the Chinese have built new high-speed-trains. And it doesn't surprise me to hear that they are having trouble getting people to ride them because of a pervasive feeling that they aren't safe. (gee ya think?). Anyway for these reasons I find myself asking the question: does mankind actually possess intelligence, or is it just too overwhelming to contemplate the idea that, actually, we don't?
:)
Doug S.

Thanks Andrea,
Yes, I've gone through all of Diehl and Houska's work. Some of the first researchers to develop dynamic kite models I believe.
They apply Betz's result in their paper, I am actually doing the opposite: I claim that Betz efficiency is meaningless for many kite systems and I derive a different efficiency measure.
Best Regards,
Sean

If you take the total swept area of your kite's path, the upper-end of the available total power will be bounded by Betz, as all wind-energy systems are. Meanwhile, my guess as to what you're trying to say is that you cannot envision a moving-kite-based wind energy system that could achieve the Betz coefficient as applied to its entire swept area? Or are you saying you can beat Betz (famous last words), or what? What's your "efficiency measure"?

There is a wide spectrum of design and discovery modalities. 

Open invitation for applications for multiple lines to upper point from multiple anchors: 

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos wrote:

Kite Imagineering  

http://thegoat.backcountry.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/tree_pee.jpg

Notice that the anchors to the multiple lines need not be startionary. 

August 22, 2009, maiden flight for Volkite video. 

Hi all

I am looking for a small kite actuator. Something that I can tie onto a small para-foil kite (maybe 1m²) and then control it via remote control and maybe add an autopilot later.

I am finding it rather difficult to design one, so I thought maybe someone would have ideas they can share or links with info that could help. Maybe some mechanism already exists on some RC toy which can be used for a kite?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Christoff

There are various delta winged RC planes on the market which if tethered as a drogue behind your kite I would think would serve your purpose. I'm not sure I know what  control strategy you have in mind. Google Turngy tek sumo and you can get an idea of what's out there. You could start with one of these then add gyros from an RC helicopter and presumably control the delta wing to fly straight and level behind the kite. Whether making the delta simply fly straight and level would make your kite do what you want I don't know. Anyway the website will give you an idea of equipment available.

The Century Illustrated Magazine and some of its kite classics: 

I guess this is the closest to a published design for what you are looking for:

http://adrienemery.com/2012/10/02/enph-459/

If you prefer to an actuator have a look at Air Hogs RC Wind Chaser:

http://www.amazon.com/Air-Hogs-Black-Wind-Chaser/dp/B001FTAUIC/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2L58RRGAKGXAH

for a 1m² para-foil kite you would have to scale it up though :)

/cb

Here is a RC stunt kite "Acrokite" http://youtu.be/sGE3gAkhDwI .It is available on Amazon and other similar websites. A wheel with an angular actuator rolls up and unwinds one or the other side of the thread,allowing turning.Note: with this sort of stunting it is not possible to block the position:when the position is neutral (no piloting),the kite flights in static way towards the top of the window.

 

PierreB,

http://flygenkite.com

http://wheelwind.com

Hi Doug,

Our efficiency measure works like this this:
You tell me:
a) the Area and L/D of all the wings in your system,
b) the windspeed,
c) THE ANGLE OF THE OVERALL RESTRAINING FORCE (i.e. force not due to the wind) acting on the system.
I give you a maximum power you cannot exceed.

Betz works like this:
You tell Betz
a) the swept area of your system
b) the windspeed
Betz gives you a maximum power you cannot exceed.

Many of the kite power systems being developed could only achieve a tiny fraction of Betz's
limit, so the Betz limit tells them little. For those systems our limit gives a TIGHTER upper bound = more useful.

Here's a small example:a single 200m^2 kite, on a 1km tether, flying at around 500m altitude ( tether force = restraining force, has an angle of about 30 degrees to the ground), let's say the kite has an L/D of 6 and the wind is 10m/s.

Betz's maximum power = 470 MW (swept area = 1.6 million sqm.)
My maximum power = 350 kW

As you can see, my bound gives a much more sobering figure. If you want to impress investors perhaps you'll do your sums with the Betz limit, but if you want a more realistic cap on the power your kite can generate, my bound is more useful in this case.

Best Regards,
Sean

ps. I've simplified things a bit here. A lot of details are given in the paper to take into account more system parameters, such as system weight, tether weight, lift coefficient..

Lines in AWES may be of many sorts playing various roles: main tether-set lines, control lines, hybrid control-tether lines, object-delivery lines. personnel safety lines, aloft control-actuator lines, bridle lines, rigging lines, etc.     There may be occasion to move objects on a line. Moving objects (fluids or not) along a line may be exterior to a line or interior to a line (pipe line).  The line might move an attached object; or the object might move over a relatively static line. Perhaps an object might swing on a pendulum from point A to point B to be caught or not.  Etc. (?)    This topic thread invites tech notes that advance AWES or practical kiting  (PK) by moving objects in or on lines. 

Invited for this topic thread:  Image

I guess you should build one. Let us know when you have a working model. Maybe start at a small scale using model airplane parts and a microwave oven and some lasers and computers and stuff. Good luck.
As I have stated a few times on here, technically there are unlimited theoretical ways to make some power. They vary in efficiencym complexity, and cost. The state of the art that you have to beat can have as few as just one moving part, though most wind turbines have more.

When I first heard Wayne German promoting your idea of mutually-tethered, inter-reeling, freeflying kites, microwaving their energy to ground stations, at the first AWE conference in Chico, CA, I thought it seemed odd to promote combining so many new, untested, non-standard, expensive modes of operation and apparatus into a single new idea. The spectre of an aiming malfunction frying the populace below was just one ugly potebntial outcomes I could envision. Not that I was too worried about such an unlikely outcome as that such a system would ever be built anyway - it's all just half-baked fantasy..

I had trouble understanding how he could keep talking this idea up with a straight face. Well I soon figured out that most people talking up AWE ideas are in no way serious inventors with any plans to actually build or develop their promoted ideas. Mostly they just want to hear themselves talk and they actually have no background in wind energy and no appreciation of any of the salient factors that govern successful wind energy installations.

I've pointed out that for every new wind energy configuration that works, there are thousands of ideas promoted that never pan out at all. Most are never built. The few that are built usually give up after the first small prototype when they see how little power if any, is made.

Meanwhile this forum is supposed to be an open discussion of flying wind energy ideas. So when I hear an idea that I consider way to much of a long-shot being promoted as though "no you've got to listen to me!" I just feel that I should respond with the voice of someone who actually practices wind energy, that the idea in question is not advisable and tell why. The "why" is that it is too complicated with not the least indication of efficiency nor affordability which are the two main factors that actually matter.

Sure it is easy to promote ideas that ignore these two main factors that matter, but maybe if you hear why it is unadvisable you might shift gears and start to pursue something that could be useful sometime this century. Or maybe I could help you decide to forget about it and pursue something you understand, or maybe my words will reach some potential investor who would have wasted their money. I have so far had companies like Kleiner Perkins and Honeywell waste millions of dollars by not listening to me. It's OK maybe they will listen to you and waste more.

My previous posts on this idea have pointed out that the subsystems do not exist, so talk of combining so many untested methods seems innocently naive.

For example, if you could point to economical microwave power transmission and show that the cost of the transmitting and receiving stations could be economically added to a wind energy system instead of power lines, that might be one tiny step in favor of an airborne wind energy system that uses such microwaves.

then if you could show how that could be done safely from the air, that would be abnother nice step toward minimal credibility.

If you could show two freeflying kites, mutually tethered with reels that could negotiate airspace autonomously, that might be a tiny step toward credibility.

Do you think this idea is anywhere near such a stage of development? I don;t see it. So I thought I'd tell my thoughts on the topic. It's not a personality contest, it's a talk about technology. Some people want to talk about real technology, and some people want to turn the discussion toward science fiction.

Thanks for looking at my website by the way.

:)
Doug S.

This topic thread invites furthering of