Power plants including windfarms rely on employees, not villager volunteers. Any wind energy system needs 2 levels of overspeed protection - regular plus emergency, and the ability to shut down ahead of a major storm or for any other reason. Dave S. talks about volunteer pilots flying kites just for the honor. Sure, for the first day maybe. OK wait let's say until lunch time. You guys are in la-la-land. If AWE ever gets going it will be while you all stand by and watch with running mostly irrelevant commentary.
:)

Hello Gabor:
Unfortunately this forum is not in your native language, and I have trouble deciphering the online rants of "professor crackpots" from around the world, promoting their wind energy ideas. But I'm familiar with the desperate tone - that I can understand.

It seems you're challenging me to produce a small working model since I suggested that you produce a small working model.
Well I did bring a demo of a flying SuperTurbine(R) to the first world AWE conference. It was deployed and then it ran passively for 2 days. It required no pilot, nobody to monitor it overnight. In the morning it was still there in the air, waiting for some wind.

I agree, I should be building more and more AWE models every day. Put my money where my mouth is - that is true. The difference between mine and most of the rest? My wind energy solutions work the first time. They make electricity, not excuses.

It seems to me that you said:
1) There is plenty of shear to harness for demo purposes, without going to the jet stream.
I say "OK then go ahead and build one and do it - how hard can it be?".

2) small models CAN get up into the jet stream,
I say "OK then go ahead and build one and do it - how hard can it be?"

3) There is no point building small models - you have to build a big one.
I say "OK then go ahead ans build one and do it - how hard can it be?".

but.....
We know the good professor has no intention of ever building a model at any scale. It would be too difficult for the professor. Deep down, he knows it would never work for economical power production. It would be too hard. Not that it could not work at all, just that he will never achieve it, and if he did, it would never pay for itself in cheaper electricity.

What does the professor really need?
An excuse!
An excuse why he doesn't have to build it.
An excuse that says, "I am a genius and yet I never have to prove it."
That excuse in wind energy usually consists of:
"It must be built very large and we don't have the budget for that yet". That excuse can typically buy you a couple years.

That lets you endlessly talk about a concept that you will never build and you guys can argue about the details all day long, just like a bunch of theologians arguing about exactly what some bible passage really means, who was really related to whom, and how, during biblical times, etc.

Basically taking a base of sheer nonsense, and building a million details on top. Hey you could use that for the name of your system! "Shear Nonsense"! Get it? :) A play on words...

Most of what we read about is ignorance commenting on the last bit of ignorance - ignorance squared. Ignorance piled on top of ignorance. Ignorance piled so high it collapses of its own weight while the ignorant do not even see it, due to that same ignorance. no harm, no foul. Would we invade a discussion of the bible at a church and insist the discussion stick to proven facts? No, so here we should also respect everyone's opinion, whether fact-based or just some crazy notion they keep insisting on.

We in wind energy watch this with amusement - it has always been a part of wind energy and it is the humor of the industry. Please let me know when you have a glider that goes up and comes back with charged batteries for you. Or comes back with some liquified air.
:)

Great, you can work on that liquified-air-as-energy-storage first.
Get one component working before citing it as a component in your next Dr. Suess/Rube Goldberg scenario.

Is anyone doing that? Liquified air as energy storage? How and why? Is there some reason we don't see energy stored that way? maybe it's not worth actually looking into - too much trouble, right? I mean it IS a simple idea, right? So if that one component works well, is it not worthy of a development effort in itself? After all, improved methods of energy storage are much needed, right?

On the other hand, maybe there is some flaw in the idea of storing energy as liquid air. I mean, you never see it do you? But it has on essential feature for Professor Crackpot's purposes: It makes one more great excuse, in a field dominated by excuses. Every so often we hear about compressed-air cars, right?

One thing many have noted about inventing: It is enough of a challenge to change or improve a single thing. One aspect. Not ten at once. If an "invention" includes too many new ideas, chances are at least one of them will ruin the final outcome. It is best to combine proven components.

Duh-Vinci is a great example:
His lame-ass "helicopter" was a Santos-esque misstep. A 100% solidity rotor, like no helicopter would EVER use, or HAS ever used, with a cloth surface. Also not used by those who actually DO it instead of talking about it. A clue! A clue! (Pay no attention to clues!) Sound familiar? Mmmm Hmmm. Hey, my helicopter ideas in junior high school also had somewhat higher solidity rotors that used a lot of cloth. That is typical for kids and beginners. Some things never change.

It's well-understood today that Duh-Vinci's helicopter would not work any more than his crank-operated battle tank that showed an internal gearing conflict so the crank would turn the wheels in opposite directions. I've seen better ideas and better illustrations in kids' notebooks in junior high school.

In the case of Duh-Vinci, all he would have had to do was use the wind turbine blades that had already been in operation for 500 years, but he, like today's AWE crowd, could not even identify the pre-existing, off-the-shelf component he needed, because it was turned 90 degrees from his desired orientation. And THAT is supposed to be the smartest person in the world, and it goes downhill from there.

Now, 500 years later, we see ideas even WORSE than Duh-Vinci's helicopter offered. imagine Duh-Vinci's helicopter trying to fly by pumping the umbrella up and down - that's the level of ideas we keep reading about on this forum. And that's the better ideas - again, it goes downhill from there.

No wonder nobody has an AWE solution up and running today.
Duh.
:)
Duhg Selsam
all "great thinker's" names
start with a Duh.
duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...........
By the way would you guys stop talking about nocturnal emissions?

I'm off all that is written about the piezo, but I still come to the conclusion that they have a great chance.
A breakthrough in the industry often been driven by the advent of new materials. I think that airbornes are not an exception. I assume that there will be a net material, which is partly to allow air through itself, will generate electricity. Transmission of electricity to the ground is likely to be a single wire as the waveguide. The last decades of the entire scientific and industrial revolution happening in microcosm. May be we have to focus on these technologies? Dreaming of a small'll never get a great result.

Alex

Also some investigations of piezo fabric from Elias Siores
http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-modern-woven-fabrics-technology/smart-woven-fabrics-in-renewable-energy-generation

New video: 

Gabor:
I do make wind generators. I have one of the only reliable small wind turbine models known to man. That means survival for years in known punishing sites that consistently destroy leading brands of turbines within a few months. Ours now just keep spinning at these locations, with no failures in well over a year now - maybe 2 years.
It took years of broken turbines and burned out generators before we got it right.

Yes I also fabricate the supermagnet generators here. Please visit http://www.PM-Alt.com I'm building one today as a matter of fact, and no, I don't mine the copper. In fact I barely touch the copper since small builders who are not complete idiots usually have their stators wound by companies that have the requisite machinery. And no, I don't make my own ball bearings either. But I do produce a very high quality permanent magnet alternator, and a very reliable turbine based on it. You have a lot of empty talk. It seems you have no answer if questioned about any details such as storing energy by liquifying air. Let's see you make something that works.
:)
Doug S.

I thought that we had on the table: 

Proposed build: 

Vertical takeoff for an AWES: 

Wow Dave S. you must be a genius. To think that I somehow never heard of cryogenic fuels. Yup I guess you nailed it. Never heard of them. Had no idea a Saturn 5 burned liquid hydrogen and LOX. Just to make you happy. Again, you're a genius. Hey I was watching when they used to go to the moon. What I was talking about was the idea of storing energy on an airplane by compressing air to a liquid. Nothing to do with cryogenic fuels. I asked, if compressing air to a liquid were a good way to store energy, are there any examples? Why isn't Tesla doing it? Is it a good way to store energy? If so why is nobody using it? Or are they? I mean, we've all heard of compressed-air cars, right? Somehow I don't recall them compressing the air to a liquid. Why? Wait let me guess, you have no answers either, right? So is liquid air a good way to store energy? Or is this adding a second unproven/inadvisable layer on top of a foundation that is similarly shooting in the wrong direction? A proposed energy storage solution that sucks, or has some fatal flaw? Professor Crackpot talking nonsense as usual? Like vertical-axis wind turbines - possible, just not advisable and not economic? zLike even if it works, it could still totally suck. That seems to be something nobody here ubnderstands. They seem to think if somnething could theoretically work at all, it is "the answer". Nothing could be further from the truth. Hey I'm just asking. I don't pretend to know the answer, but I didn't bring up the topic. I'm just asking, if this detail of liquid air energy storage is for real, are there any examples? I guess we have no answer. Of course the promoter bristles at the suggestion that a robust and valid concept is best tried at a small scale first, with the added benefit of a possible useful product that can sell in its own right, while providing the basis and experience to then produce a larger version. Wait, didn't the promoter himself say there is great wind shear closer to the ground, ready to exploit? No jetstream necessary? But no, what Professor Crackpot really needs and specializes in are things just out of reach, to form an excuse of why they never seem to actually HAVE an improved wind turbine of any sort. The more complicated, the more new theories that need to be combined, the less likely it will even work at all, let alone form an economical solution to any problem anywhere at any time. And certainly, the more impossible, untried, or untested aspects, the less likely anyone is going to insist it "be built or shut up". So it has always gone - make sure your idea is too hard to build until you have a million dollars, then you can get paid while still producing nothing useful, saying you need more funding to get any results. Or Gabor could get a small proof of concept going where he could then fine-tune the concept and find out all the things that can go wrong at an affordable scale. But nevermind - it;'clear that this is an on-paper-only idea. Building it could only hurt the already perfect record of it acting exactly as Gabor says, in the minds of people who read about it, as though it is all figured out.
OK have fun Dave S.
Seeya!
:)
Doug S.

When and where might liquid air play a role in tethered or untethered AWES either as an energy storing item or as a worker in some other manner?

Yes, so airborne wind energy can be simple, work the first time, like I've been saying. Joe this sounds too simple. NASA and all those guys would not want to be involved. I mean where's the computer? The lasers? The cameras? The sophisticated multi-million-dollar software? This is why I told you from day one that groups like NASA would not build anything that worked. It's too easy - too simple. It's hard to not fall on the floor laughing when goofballs like that walk into the room and start talking smack like they are going to solve all the problems, or even make a difference, all the while saying they have the advantage of not needing any results. They all just want to play - with stuff too complicated to ever work, so they can draw fat checks while producing nothing. If they had something that worked, they'd have to optimize it and that sounds like too much work, right? So they chase goofy ideas that will never work. Then they get mad if you even suggest they actually build one. The solution you outline makes too much sense. That's why I say I can think of 10 easy ways to do AWE in 10 seconds, and most of them have nothing to do with SuperTurbine(R). It is too simple, and it would probably work pretty well on the first try. As you wrote this simple concept, you realized that 101 kites is not even necessary, and slowly came to the realization that you could even just build one, as a start. But of course any kite-based solution is likely amenable to stacking. And then maybe 1000 modules would be even better than 101. (kites, not Dalmations). Which is why I have been saying how completely full-of-it almost everyone on here is - they somehow all forgot about stacking kites. Nothing simple allowed. Let's never mention anything that would actually work, let's stay in la-la-land forever, right Dave S. and Gabor? Let's just discuss humping, pumping laser-guided stratospheric compressed-air solutions, or waste a lot of time making giant kites from cheap tarps that produce no power whatsoever. Almost nobody here talks about stacking kites, which would be the first thing I would do if I had a kite that made power: stack 'em and make more, right? Why doesn't Makani come in a stack? Probably the same reason they can't answer their phone. Lights on, nobody home. Bumped off so Google could buy the remains. So that is where you are now at. There need be nothing in the least bit complicated nor mysterious about AWE, nothing hard to design, nothing hard to understand. The best bet might be to fire all the "smart" people and let regular old dummies like us handle it. Smart is not needed. In fact it seems to get in the way. Like Nike says "Just Do It". That's where most projects end. Right after the word "Just"...
:)
Doug S.

Why mention it at all if he is not serious?
It forms a great excuse to never build the glider.
That is what it really is, an excuse.
I'm not buying that excuse. Use a battery.
Now let's see your system work Gabor.
And by the way, Gabor has reached the typical stage where he cites some engineering firm confirming his idea. Seen that a million times. Professor Crackpot often finds some other crackpot sucker to agree with whatever he says. Often if you read the independent analysis, the most they are willing to say is it technically violates no laws of physics, or that "given the information presented by the inventor, it could work", etc. There is usually a minimal confirmation, if at all. And that doesn't matter anyway, since we have seen how full-of-it most "authorities" are when it comes to AWE anyway. If any "authority" understood AWE, we'd already be using it. If the authority understood the fine points, they'd develop it themselves. They are baffled. The "smart" people are not always that smart. It takes a real dummy to do smart things. Take it from me.
:)
And stop talking about nocturnal emissions...

Errata on a number. Please note that our best reference so far is 11,284 wings in the train.  Flight: October 18, 1990, in Kagoshima, Japan. The kite was master-minded by 73-yr-old Sadao Harada. The Japan Kite Association apparently approved of the record. Above the count were 31 wings that broke and so did not count for the record. 

Dear Doug,

+

Hey Dave S.:
Let me remind you this debunking goofy wind energy ideas debate was already old ten years ago when I got into it. The symptoms of stubborn ignorance were well entrenched before people like me, you, Gabor, or Wayne entered the fray.

Yes yes, the Wright Brothers, Einstein - sure, they represent YOU, while I, producing working wind turbines, "just can't appreciate" your Einstein-like contributions. Sure Dave. If Einstein had demonstrated a complete inability to understand ANY physics, and instead ONLY talked about all the typical newbie missteps symptomatic of kids who could never "get it", then yes, you would be alike. Then he wouldn't be the Einstein we know, would he? Instead, let me compare you to that "great inventor", Leonardo DaVinci.

We all know DaVinci was one of the greatest inventors ever, right? Perhaps THE greatest inventor ever. Because he invented the ummmm....
The uhhh - OK wait a second, let me think. Oh oh I know this one -
DaVinci invented the ummmmm err emmmm - Oh that thing everyone uses today - you know it's on the tip of my tonque... ummmm
the Mona Lisa?

His "helicopter" was ignorant and apparently wouldn't have worked, since nobody has ever built a working model anything like that...
(Maybe with enough horsepower? What about counteracting torque? No tail rotor?)
What was DaVinci ignoring that was all around him? Oh yeah! The leading industrial power in Europe at the time: Wind turbines with low solidity rotors using airfoils. With tail rotors that steered the stationary craft into the wind. How dumb could have DuhVinci been? OK that was 500 freakin' years ago and yet you persist in a DuhVinci-like trance, only considering and often defending goofy ideas that could never work, while completely ignoring or even denigrating simple ideas that would obviously work well. Just like DaVinci.

Look at his battle tank. I'm serious when I say I've seen better "inventions" in the margins of kids' notebooks in junior high school. The first thing I noticed about his "battle tank" drawing was that it showed something that would not work: the crank would turn the wheels in opposite directions, resulting in no motion. The basic idea was already popular and well understood by all yet he couldn't even draw one that could work. I think that was celebrated as one of his best "inventions".

The wheel-lock pistol, which gave peasants the ability to resist the King's armored knights resulting in The Reformation, is often associated with DaVinci, but if you look into it, it seems maybe others invented it, and DaVinci "may have" served as a draftsman for one version.

So Dave, nice attempt to compare yourself to Einstein and the Wright Brothers (again). As I have tried to tell you 100 times now, comparing yourself to the Wright brothers, Einstein, whatever, is just typical idiot newbie talk. They ALL say that - EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! OMG I can't even believe it every time I hear it again.
"You can't be serious!" is what I think, but then again, what else do they EVER say? Of COURSE you are going to say that. Kicking and screaming like out of control babies - they come in promising the world, demanding we worship the ground they walk on, and get chased away as ignorant idiots. We've seen it for years and years and years now. Congratulations, you fit the archetype perfectly. Nice job, and thanks for removing any doubt as to your exact, highly predictable profile.

I'll give you just one example to illustrate:
Every year at the Windpower trade show, there is usually at least one "new" wind turbine. It's vertical-axis, 100% solidity, with lots and lots of vanes. The display talks about how much more powerful it is than regular old GE wind turbines. They usually have a fan to show that it can spin. Often the "breakthrough" is maglev bearings. of course they do not address issues like how much it would cost to build such a 100% solidity turbine 300 feet tall compared to a 2% solidity GE turbine. And they don't acknowledge that the drag-based vertical-axis style is perhaps 1/8th as efficient at best. Nope, their big talking point is maglev bearings - a solution in search of a problem.

The maglev bearings remind me of Gabor's citing liquified air as an energy storage medium. Now mind you, I didn't even say there was anything WRONG with it. I just asked a question: Is it a proven method? Is there any evidence it is a good way to store energy? Is anyone else using it as such? Hey, I dont even know, I'm just asking.

And from the typical hostile response to any pointed question, I think I'm starting to see an answer, Don't get me wrong - I've never even considered liquifying air as a method of energy storage. It sounds like it could work. It doesn't violate any laws of physics. Just like the vertical-axis 100% drag-based turbine - sure, it would work. The only question is, would it work WELL? Not just WORK, but, on first principles, is it a SOLUTION?

The answer of course is NO, and the companies that develop these ideas every year and pay for a booth unknowingly form the "humor" section of the AWEA Windpower conference every year. Hey, everyone needs a good laugh now and then, right?

So Dave, nice attempt to compare you and your kind of thinking to Einstein, the Wright brothers, etc., but it is just digging yourself deeper into the same hole.

If you think I should spend a week getting ready for that first conference, drive hundreds of miles to get there, and then be forced to listen to Wayne interrupting every single speaker over and over again while insisting that the only thing we should consider is mutually-tethered free-soaring gliders beaming their reel-produced power to Earth via microwaves, and that somehow I should just sit still and be quiet and not be able to discuss or respond to anything Wayne said is just not nice. Not fair. Wayne brought it up. he was the one interrupting every speaker. He started the conversation. If someone is rude and promoting goofy ideas, I am going to point it out. If someone insists they "have the answer", I am going to throw in my 2 cents - maybe they do, and in most cases they clearly DON'T.

So there are two responses:
1) Ask pertinent questions
2) Suggest they build one, even at a small scale.

Since the goofy-idea-promoters KNOW deep down that exposure to reality will kill their idea, pointed questions or suggestions to build and test are answered with AdHominem attacks on the experts questioning the promoter. The AdHominem attacks on those with a little experience consist of calling them "closed-minded", culminating in a comparison of the promoter to "The Wright Brothers" or in this case, "Einstein", as though merely invoking these names can, like a magic chant, rescue dumb ideas masquerading as viable solutions.

Let's be clear, the Ad Hominem attacks come from the direction of the ignorant, pointed toward us who have experience and know the questions to ask. These questions are like hitting a switch: the promoters always react the same way. Congratulations on sticking to the ignorant newbie theme so closely!
:)
Doug S.

Chris:
Compressed air has been one of the most commonly-cited "new ideas" for mitigating the intermittency of a wind resource. There have been ENDLESS discussions, often using the tower itself as a storage tank. Other "inventors" try to remove the generator from the tower using hydraulics or pneumatics to power the generator by adding a whole new unnecessary system to one that already works fine.

The typical conversation shows an inefficient process as you outline: The air heats as it is compressed, but then the compressed air loses that heat energy during storage, and the energy recovery cycle is also not very efficient, so the process as a whole is theoretically not very efficient.

But you have changed the subject. The subject was not merely "compressed air", it was "liquified air". Do you have any information on liquified air as energy storage? Obviously, something this simple must have been considered, right? So what ARE the considerations? What are the facts? Is this for real, or is it another microwave nightmare masquerading as a solution? This must be well-documented...

The only reason I ask this question is it came up as a red flag in Gabor's promotion of his idea. Citing compressed air for energy storage is symptomatic of newbie would-be wind-energy inventors. Do those words sound familiar to you yet? It's like a slot that objects of a certain shape naturally fall into.

Imagine an automatic sorting machine with slots shaped like proven losing ideas in wind energy, so the proven losing ideas naturally fall away: The slots would have the following shapes:
1) drag-based operation
2) high solidity working surfaces
3) cloth working surfaces
4) reversing cycles
5) onboard energy storage, usually compressed air or hydrogen electrolysis
6) maglev bearings
7) low speed rotation (if they rotate at all)
(and there are more)

After the typical newbie, previously disproven notions predictably fall through their pre-shaped slots, they can be heard making the same sound as they are discarded through the refuse chute into the waste bin "The Wriiiiiight Brotherrrrrssssssssss!!....."

I guess we have a new waste bin where they can also sometimes make the noise "Einsteeeeiiiiiiinnnnnn!".

So now that I have had some fun, and a good laugh, Dave S. can have another AdHominem attack on me, trying to say I am the one making ad hominem attacks. And he will make that same noise they all do. It's funny - they can't stop themselves! "Wrigghhhht Brotherrrrssss!" "Einsteeeeiiiinnnnn...!"

My reply: "Duh-Vinciiiiiii"

So now that you have started the conversation as some sort of expert, I challenge you to finish your conversation and get back to us with the facts on energy storage by liquified air. Not compressed air. If it works well, maybe we should be using it to power our cars.

I think this is great fun, but maybe I should get something done today.
Seeya!
:)
Doug S.

We incorporate the message: 

That is an interesting notion regarding ballast.  The high-tech balloon builders have been using lightly pressurized Helium to regulate buoyancy, but they might be better off with a small tank of highly compressed air.  

--When an application of kite systems potentially results in net energy gains by merit of target achievements or by energy balance against alternative methods of gaining target achievements, then the kite systems are doubly players in the energy marketplace.  

Zoi seems to have had a short stay at C3 Energy also. Only a cached copy holds her there; recent C3 Energy site seems to have Zoi absent. 

• Consulting Professor at Stanford University

Past

• Chief Strategy Officer at C3 Energy
• Partner at Silver Lake

Partner, Alois Flatz, of Zouk, is speaking at AWEC2013. Its rather early for Zouk to stake out a position, since they look for established revenue in making equity investments.

"Zouk is a private equity and infrastructure fund manager dedicated to generating strong returns through investments, which make a genuine environmental impact."

http://www.zouk.com/

We await to see the 33 pages: 

Incorporated as a US non-profit Industry Association, AWEC has always been an exclusive club that consistently fails to live up to the IRS legal requirement to benefit all industry players equally. Pay-to-play members have been tolerated to loot investors with false and misleading marketing claims. The insider process for choosing AWEC Presidents is secret. The AWEC2013 website bio for Guido Luetsch (below) seems a first public indication that he is in fact AWEC's latest president. One of Guido's defining initiatives as conference organizing chairman has been to ban AWEIA from conference participation, while packing in favored associates. Committee deliberations behind the AWEIA ban are also secret. No appeal is allowed; no process or will for resolving complaints exists. AWEC's 2012 negotiated promise with AWEIA, to abide by the GSA Code-of-Conduct, has been broken. There is no public accountability.


Guido LuetschBorn 1965, married, 2 children With a master degree as business administrator of the international renowned University of St. Gallen/Switzerland Guido started his business career at Kraft Foods. As Brand Manager he developed new coffees and introduced them in various European countries. He was a founding member of the Environmental Task Force and signed responsible for various sustainable projects at Kraft Foods. 1996 Guido founded an international marketing agency and led famous campaigns for global players such as Volkswagen, Schering AG, Veuve Clicquot etc. Since 2006 Guido is working in the field of Airborne Wind Energy. From 2007 - 2013 he was assigned as General Manager of Berlin based NTS GmbH. He is the Executive Director of the international Airborne Wind Energy Consortium and since January 2013 President of the German Airborne Wind Energy Association (BHWE Bundesverband Höhenwindenergie e.V.).

Hey Gabor:
Great you had a business. Let;s congratulate ourselves. I don;t need your copngratulations for making generators. Your rant about how I should try making one was just more ignorance - people make their own generators in wind energy all the time. Look it up. Oh, sorry, that's people who understand the art.
I was talking about "make something that works" in Airborne Wind Energy, the topic of this forum. Not start an unrelated business 10 years ago.
Yes you are exactly right - we who have been debunking goofy wind energy ideas for years talk to people like we are their fathers and they are kids who need guidance.
I think my guidance pushed Joe Faust to actually propose a reasonable attempt at an AWE solution the other day, for example. Every time we hear another dumb, unworkable wise-ass excuse for a wind energy invention we hit the perpetrator =over the head with a baseball bat until someone like Joe says "Oh so you are actually pushing for ideas that coould work? OK here." Yeah - ideas that would work, not the next science fiction fantasy novel. This is not a fantasy forum though most participants don;t seem to understand the difference.
Guess what? When I first got into wind energy I got THE SAME SCOLDING from the experts. Most of what they were saying turned out to be 100% correct. So I was smart enough to listen to them, not deny everything they had learned and were trying to tell me. I did notice a trend: Anyone who actually MADE energy from the wind seemed to know certain facts that people who DON'T make energy from wind never seem to grasp. Have fun!
:)

Yeah that sounds like a real robust technology. Must have a lot of promise. Without knowing more, I'd have to say if such a simple solution was promising, we'd have heard about it more - there would be more papers besides this one. Smells like Professor Crackpot to me. I don't know what problems it may have, but, being so simple, it apparently must have some problems, or people would be using it by now, no?

The blind leading the blind.
"Now many millions can we spend and still have nothing that works?"
I skimmed the titles and saw references to humping and pumping.
As we used to say in NY: "Whadda buncha maroons"...
:)

The word was "maroons". It's New York Sarcasm.
"Whadda buncha maroons." (like the color?)
I know what I am looking at.
I've been to the conferences.
Read the articles.
Feeble. Reminds me of someone in a straightjacket except it is their minds, not their body, that is paralyzed and unable to function.
I like Joe's idea yesterday.
Of course I had thought of it years ago - it's on the list of 10 easy ways to do AWE that I keep talking about - ways that would work the first time, need no new unproven technology, no computers, no lasers, no microwaves, no liquid air in the stratosphere, but if I told you all my ideas I would not have any surprises left.
At some point I think if all these idiots want to say they are going to do AWE they should make it happen themselves. Funny to watch them all run in the wrong direction. You're right in there bro. People who have a clue - just the wrong clues. wah wah wah. How much hype did we hear about Mothra. Where is it now? hype hype hype - dud...
I am happy to give clues but I don't want to tell every idea I have yet. It will be nice for others to enjoy the feeling that they thought of something.

Funny but I have not seen any stacks used in any AWE project that I can remember. (Maybe I'm forgetting one?) It's one thing that has been bugging me from day-one especially when the "reeling" people don't even use what is known as a proven good choice for traction kites. Of course why use what is proven when you can avoid building anything by endless talk of microwaves, liquified air, and other unlikely crap that obfuscates what is a simple problem and tries to pretend it is a complex problem. Guess what? It doesn't even take a smart person to do AWE. Maybe what these self-described-genius-teams need is someone with in IQ of about 60 to set them straight. duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
:)

Inefficiencies multiply quickly. Any step that is, say, 50% efficient, reduces the overall efficiency by that same amount. Stack up a few of them and you are quickly at around 2% efficiency as electrolyzing water to make hydrogen, compressing it, then burning it in an internal combustion engine turns out to be. That has not stopped 1000 people from thinking they are geniuses for thinking of it without knowing it has already been considered and discarded 999 times.
Your self-congratulations and reference to the well-known fact of compressed-air power tools are meaningless in the face of a world constantly searching for improved energy storage that has obviously found something lacking with such a simple and "obvious" solution.
Once again like the other guy, you have strayed from the topic, which was liquified air.
I don't specifically know what the problems are but I strongly suspect if it was a good way we would have heard of it being used by now. The reason I cited it as a red flag is it shows a typical departure from reality in the minds of would-be inventors when they start talking about one invention and suddenly inject a completely new and different unproven and likely inadvisable invention without skipping a beat as though the mere fact that it passed through their brain makes it a good idea or even an indisdpensible part of their original "invention". Once again it is important to "stick to the topic" but if you are never going to build it and are in no way serious you can say whatever meaningless crap you want. Professor.
:)