Minesto News

tags: kPower Hydrokinetic Logarithmic Spiral Turbine (HLST) Note- 20rpm step-up gearing MW-scale HAWT drives looking mechanically compatible with a 20m long 3m wide HLST.

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Oilprice.com on Minesto (Mind Blowing New Energy #8)-

8 New Energy Technologies That Will Blow Your Mind | OilPrice.com

MartinK follows Oilprice.com, and might someday believe in Kite Principles

when Oilprice.com covers AWE as such.

There is a softening in the Petroverse toward RE, when "RNG" is slipped in.

July 31, 2020, post by Dave Santos
Minesto experiences delay due to mechanical failure

An serious unexpected mishap occurred. Not clear how extensive the damage from "mechanical failure...in the mooring interface", which might have caused a cascade of damage or require some redesign.
Tidal kite developer Minesto nears power generation in Faroe Islands

June 30, 2020, post by Dave Santos
re: Minesto's Radical Fix keeps the plan on track

Another design driver behind Minesto's big-ear winglets could be to maximize the proportion of lift to wingspan to fit a constraint like shipping/handling dimensions, much as transport aircraft have winglets to fit effectively longer wings within standard airport taxiway width. Minesto's winglets are too large to effectively reduce drag like the aircraft case, nor is transport range extension a primary energy paravane design driver.

The fold-up V-yoke bridle on Minesto's paravane is an interesting feature, allowing it to be towed without fouling its nose turbine. This sort of feature is too massive for airborne design, but for water-buoyant design is passable. The large blunt pod at the V-point is very draggy, and its odd that such a parasitic feature was not minimized, for reasons not publicly evident.

Perhaps the most problematic design trade-off of the current Minesto design is impact risk to sea-life. The wing LEs are scarcely swept and the turbine will be especially fatal to anything in its path. Presumably sealife will be just as confused by the fast cross-flow paravane motion as birds and bats are in air by turbine blades. Underwater carnage will be less evident and simply washed away, with a light fish-oil slick and chum downstream, when sealife impact is heavy. Sea-mammal mortality will be especially worrisome. Injured animals may become evident to fishermen and residents. Fish sonar for mitigating kill by avoidance, and cameras for kill data-logging may be needed.
-------------------------more analysis later in the day:

Sorry for the dribble of analysis...but the long trail leads to conceptual expansion of IFOs as tethered-wing-pairs, both undersea and in the sky. [[Ed notes: IFO, identified flying object, FFAWE free-flight AWES, Gabor Dobos, etc.]]

Residual Minesto Analysis-
Minesto's rigid bridle yoke feature also serves if the unit needs to be feathered in a strong current to depower, although it can also depower at the edge of its kite window. There could be an uncontrolled roll possiblity by the design choice to put all control surface inputs at the tail, which as noted, traded away roll input in the DOF already constrained by a Y-bridle in its normal position, but unconstrained when the yoke folds forward. P-factor is a likely aerodynamic parameter in the Minesto paravane, which may have figured in the yaw issues corrected by the winglets. A new consideration is drag-based P-factor of a single unbalanced energy harvesting turbine on a wing.

Conceptual AWES Branching-
An interesting operational configuration class barely mentioned before is the possibility of two opposed Minesto "flygen" units in "free-flight."

Also, a single flygen paravane opposed by a large soft paravane is an interesting combo. The soft paravane could operate in deeper water at higher pressure, and the pair harvest shear energy of differential currents. This could be a boon for deep-sea exploration and colonization, a realm where energy is scarce.

It seems that faired tethers undersea are comparatively favored by relaxed mass limit.

Similarly, original tethered kite-pair concepts [[Ed: FFAWE]] could be extended by including flygen RATs. Motor/gen winching between a tethered pair had been identified as a potentially useful mode, but turbines extend the design options, like IFOs that can fly paired or independently in motor/gen modes. The novel idea is paired IFOs perhaps overcoming limitations on pure DS [[Ed: dynamic soaring]] pattern-flying, by being cheaper larger slower glider kites unable to do pure DS well.

June 29, 2020, post by Dave Santos
Minesto's Radical Fix keeps the plan on track

Readers in Open AWE have long known about kite dynamics, vertical area forward is an essential design feature for quick authoritative pattern flying when coordinated roll-pitch turn input is missing; a design fix suggested more than once before. Not to be confused with pilot kite design, with less rear vertical surface, and no fast turning wanted.

Now Minesto has adopted forward vertical surface as well, no doubt because previous turns were too sloppy and the sweep pattern too loose. There is even a chance the fix thinking came from Open AWE prior art. It seems the fuselage should be a bit longer and have forward keel form, but "big ears" will keep this leading paravane energy R&D on track.

Nice fix:
WATCH: Minesto readies tidal kite in Faroe Islands
DG100 device will soon hit the water off Vestmannasund as part of a demonstration project

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Ed adds: /news-media

May 13, 2020, post by Dave Santos
Minesto drum beat continues on CNBC

An archipelago in the Atlantic wants to add tidal power to its energy mix by using kite-like tech
Ed adds from the article: "using tidal “kite” technology"
and "two grid-connected tidal kite systems"

April 1, 2020, post by Dave Santos
Steady as she goes:
Subsea Kite Technology Makes a Big Splash for Marine Power

Feb. 20, 2020, post by Joe Faust
Minesto PPA with utility SEV

Minesto takes a trip to the remote Faroe Islands for tidal energy PPA The PPA with utility SEV covers the planned installations of two 100kW ‘subsea kite’ systems and an additional 2MW capacity allocated for future installations."

October 29, 2019 Dave Santos

Minesto continues to mid-cap investment

SAAB is now definitely in positive revenue territory with its bold Minesto start-up.

Minesto gets more funds to commercialise subsea kite technology

Oct. 16, 2019

Minesto Receives Approval for EU-funded Site Project in France

Misc. notes:

sea kite

Turbidity is a measure of the degree to which the water loses its transparency due to the presence of suspended particulates.

Minesto unlocks a global renewable energy resource