Doug, 

IMAGE URL:

I would like to welcome Sergei Brin to the field of lab-grown meat.
:)
Doug S.

The Betz efficiency is truly meaningless to most wind energy inventors since, as you point out, they are unlikely to even approach, let alone challenge, the Betz coefficient as applied to the entire swept area.
On the other hand, a flying turbine that travels across the wind can overcome what Betz would allow for the same turbine, hard-mounted.
:)
Doug S.

Doug,        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin

--Note in article on Sergey Brin in Wikipedia: 

Thanks for all the good info! That is exactly the type of links and info I wanted. This AWE group is really helpful. Thanks!

I'll send some pictures when I get my device to work in a few weeks hopefully.

Hi Gabor:
Sorry if I confused details of your proposed solution with Wayne's. I guess it was the two mutually-tethered gliders that caught my attention. Did I get that part right? OK I guess rather than soft kites, you recommend hard wings? Or airplanes? Gliders? And instead of microwaving the power down, your proposal is to charge onboard batteries, land, and swap out the batteries for fresh. Then those batteries get connected to the grid and sell the power to the power comnpany at 4 cents/kWh, until another airplane returns to charge them again? Well OK that is easier to build using model airplane parts. Sounds like there is nothing stopping you so I will await your working system. And of course I will eagerly await Wayne's system too. You are both very insistent. The next step is to be persistent. If you think its really worth the trouble. It would be too easy and too time-consuming to document all the challenges with this idea. Who knows maybe it could be done in some sense. I guess you could work on the mutually-tethered gliders first and get that part working. Maybe it could be a yacht for people so rich they could afford a billion-dollar toy, yet don't want to pay for gas for an airplane. For economical power generation it sounds too expensive to me, with too many undeveloped and/or questionable aspects. But hey at least it is an idea and maybe it could lead to something.
:)
Doug S.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Jeff Bezos to the world of newspaper publishing. The one thing I remember most about Jeff, at Techonomy 2010, is that he is always smiling or laughing. As the saying goes. "Whatever he's on, I want some!"
:)
Doug S.

Doug,
Please itemize how Jeff is adding to the AWES RAD flow.
Thanks.
JoeF

Hi Joe:
The post is an inside (attempted) joke, just for this group. If you have to explain a joke, it loses any chance of being funny.
:)
Doug S.

Maybe someone laughed before I posted!   Hope so. 

Jeff's interest in living in the sky (space)

Oh yes Joe. There is almsot unlimited humor to be found here.
Sticking to the lack of a topic, let me also point out that the proposed volunteer pilots of the proposed kites, living onboard in the proposed flying kite-lifted community, as some describe, will get bored when they're not working, and require reading material. Since printed matter will add to weight, they are better off reading digital books in the sky so Amazon will be a main player in AWE (we just had to see the details!). Then again if the wind stops and the fantasy kite-suspended community comes crashing to the ground, the crew may still be able to download survival manuals. It's amazing how well-thought-out some of these ideas are. Can't wait to visit one of these flying kite-suspended cities. That will be fun.
:)
Doug S.

Doug, the Sky Living in AWES will use wind and buoyancy and apparent wind, not just ambient wind. 

A dedicated topic thread:  FISH    Forever-in-Sky Homes 

Toward FISH, are there amongst up wanting to fill in the blanks for some records: 

--What questions might be asked?

Kite Power

This is just an observation based on my involvement with one of the longest duration aircraft flights back in the 1980s. In this case an autonomous vehicle called Condor. I think we set a record at around 5 days. In our case propulsion system reliability and fuel were the limiting factors. Not far behind however were the following:

One of the nice things about decentralized power is that there won't be a need to maintain a large, idle staff for the occasional weather event.  A community-owned and community-serving utility will have no trouble raising a "Volunteer Fire Department" that will gather whenever the wind rises.  People who hang around hang gliders reflexively orient any on the ground into a wind shift, and farmers and sailors also swing into action when Aeolus moans.

They also maintain a constant watch. I don't know that you need a large crew constantly but you almost certainly will need at least a watch keeper at all times. For the sorts of things you're talking about doing I can't imagine any responsible authority letting you do less.

Boeing   

All may advance the facts and notes concerning world records or national records for kiting. 

Ah the wonders of the internet.

We have some notes in prior posts about Minesto. 

OK Joe and Gabor:
I looked up Gabor's idea now that you have told me I had it wrong.
OK you were right and I was wrong - it is a new and different idea.
Flying gliders in and out of the jet stream, using onboard propellers to harness energy while gliding, storing the energy by compressing air to liquid or charging batteries, then parachuting the charged batteries or air tanks to the ground to be connected to the grid.

My advice would still be to perfect a small model first. But a small model may have trouble getting to the jet stream. Of course that is where saying you will target the jet stream could get you years of funding, with years of built-in excuse for a lack of results:
"Hey the jet stream is so high - how do you expect us to work in the jet stream?" People will not notice for years that the main reason for the idea, harnessing the jet stream, forms the main excuse to go on for decades never achieving such, but perhaps continually saying you are "about a year or two away from commercialization", like the Moller SkyCar which has been 2 years away from production since I was a kid in the 1970's, or the space elevator, which of course has a built-in excuse of an even greater magnitude.

How about a new term:
"excuse-driven research":
Name a research project that you know can never work, so you never have to show any real results, just keep getting more funding with a built-in excuse for failure.

Still, it is an interesting idea, and it does not violate any laws of physics. Maybe this idea will lead to something similar that is easier to actually achieve. As it is, you could try dynamic soaring using a mountain or just basic wind shear first and see how it goes at a small scale. If it were me, I'd be concerned with the basic economics and complexity

Toward AWES: 

Jesse Richman kites 790ft above the Columbia River Gorge 

Correct spelling:   Pierre Benhaiem

Dear Dave,

--That video seems to be a rerun of a similar title with the word "The"

Sure Joe. And they are working on giant spotted mushrooms that will serve as homes, with unicorns in the garden. People will spend their entire lives in the giant spotted mushroom. If they try to leave they will be forced to stay. They will be deprived of a normal life just to make a fantastical story. You and Dave S. will be in charge of the whole thing. Then you will wake up.
:)

Hello Gabor:
What you've put together is way to many arguments and documentation, which adds up to a Shakespearean: "Methinks thou doth protest too much." Too much documentation, to little chance of success. n Endless analysis, likely leading nowhere.

What we know about wind energy:
There are UNLIMITED methods to capture wind energy.
A VERY FEW (basically one) methods have proven economically feasible.
To say you have a new theoretical way to capture wind energy is ALMOST meaningless unless it can fit into the context of economical power production.

Example: We've seen 100% solidity vertical-axis wind turbines promoted for decades. Sure, the wind turns them. Sure they can be connected to a generator. But the facts of slow rotation, inherent aerodynamic inefficiency, and the high cost of a high-solidity rotor, combine to guarantee that no such animal will emerge as an economical wind energy solution, no matter how many thousand attempts are made. In each case, enthusiasm gets way ahead of experience and common sense. In spite of the endless promotion of such devices, their main advantage is really that any uneducated person can think of them, and the disadvantages cannot be overcome with more hype. Each new attempt thinks it is the first. Compare it to a gambler thinking he can easily "beat the house" as opposed to the casino that thrives on such naivete.

I've explained at length what I affectionately call "The Professor Crackpot syndrome". That's where the good professor skipped all economics courses in his own education, and becomes fixated on a single notion, pulling out all the stops to rationalize it at all costs, with no regard for how many new and questionable technologies he may be trying to combine, no regard for an economic outcome, etc.

In your case you cite compressing air to liquid as a means of energy storage - an alternative to batteries.
The astute observer sees a red flag right away:
Has compressing air to a liquid been shown to be am economic means of power storage? If not, why not? What are the chances that such a new idea should be included in your new idea for dynamic soaring in and out of the jet stream? Why include this idea if it has not been proven economical? If liquifying air is a good way to store energy, why not pursue that alone, instead of mucking it up with a glider in the jetstream? Could it be a subconscious avoidance of success by making sure a new idea could never really work?

Is there any indication that airplanes the size of say jumbo jets could be built and flown 24/7/365 and produce enough charged batteries to pay for themselves? Any indication that even if you had free electricity, that you could charge batteries and discharge them into the grid as an economically-sustainable business? Power the grid by charging batteries and swapping them out for fresh batteries?
As I keep saying, there is NO LIMIT to the number of methods that could generate SOME energy, but at what cost? Can the planes ever generate as much electricity as it took to build them? How many planes would it take to power the world? What would that cost be? Could we ever even build that many planes? Is there anything indicating that this idea is anything other than sheer fantasy? How soon do you think we will see a demo at any scale? How much money will that save the owner in lowered electric bills? At what cost?
:)
Doug S.

I think it will be funny when AWE emerges and does not resemble anything in the Springer textbook, which is why I avoided becoming involved in that textbook. Much ado about nothing.

Well it certainly has that emergent uniform reformation look / form. It's characteristic of generative algorithm, parametric designs. TUDelft are particularly good at grasshopper.

Weird not to attribute the work if it was done on open source software.

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

And: 

I have previously suggested to TUDelft grasshopper developers, artists and kite engineers that they should get together. If it's rhino, it's been baked from grasshopper first. Just not using any of the physics engines (eg kangaroo)
I couldn't see the video, I'll try again later.

It won't be too long before that killer software combination will be able to accept a landscape with meteo models and output suggestions on standard AWES

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org