This year's show was only 2.5 hours away, so I drove out for one day.  This year's exhibition floor was by far the smallest I have seen, and you could walk the whole show in an hour as opposed to getting lost for days in previous shows.  There was no "small wind" section this year, no outdoor displays, and no indication of anything airborne, just a lot of tower-climbing safety gear, powered climbing apparatus, etc.  It seems that perhaps solar is getting so cheap that interest in wind is waning.

Skimming this paper, it seemed to take a lot of words to say nothing.
By the way, if you want to see visually disturbing renewable energy, a new giant mirror-based solar power plant at Stateline looked bright even in the noon desert sunshine, with multiple visually-intense beams converging to create bright spots in the air itself - easy to see why it needed to be located far away from population centers.  (Saw it on the way to AWEA Windpower 2014 in Vegas - wear sunglasses for this experience)
With no workable AWE solutions having emerged yet, it's difficult to make meaningful statements on specifics such as visual impacts. 
"Conclusion: More study is needed".  Reminded me of Mr. McKay on Southpark:  Al there really is to say is "M'Kayyy...?"  or beyond that: "M'Kay, M'Kay, M'Kayyyyy....?"
M'Kay?  M'Kay then.

AWE Weekly: because in such a fast moving field, everything is different this week, than last week.  M'Kayyyy?
:)

He was invited today to our AWE Daily here in this tech forum. 

Change note: 

Thanks for that Joe.
I heard somewhere (here?) that Peter was working on single skin kites lately.
Click on the link and there are many choices offered.
What I wonder about is specifics:  If you have a productive wind, say 30 - 40 MPH, can these kites hang in there, or would they be damaged?  I also wonder how much weight they can lift in what windspeed, and can they be flown from a single line or do they require 2 lines?  Also, can they be flown unattended or do they require constant attention/adjustment from the ground?
Does anyone have any ideas about such details?
:)
Doug S.

"The YOYO Principle" hmmmm, - pregnant with meaning.  I hate to bring it up, but these words engender a picture of "the good professor", speaking in front of a group of academics, his hair particularly unkempt that day for effect, revealing "Ze YOYO Principle!"  Yahhhhh.  Whoopeeeeee!

This is what I was envisioning for flying sailing yachts back in the 1980's (I tend to see history in reverse time).  Glad to see someone doing it.  Looks fun.

This has probably been posted before, but I ran across Ben Franklin's instructions for his kite energy experiment. 
Benjamin Franklin . Electrical Kite | PBS

 

He says you stay under a roof so the part of the string you hold onto remains dry.  Geez they were pretty smart back then.  A roof - who knew?  Rather than capturing actual lightning strikes, he just used the static charge to demonstrate charging up the same old-fashioned accumulators etc. used to study static electricity in his day. 

Not sure how he avoided actual strikes, which killed a few people in a similar shack on top of a mountain that a rocket scientist friend of mine was inside, with other rocket scientists.  (no, really - as rocket scientists jokingly say, "rocket scientists are not rocket scientists...")  Sounds pretty dangerous, but fun until that massively powerful bolt hits.  It always makes one wonder about ways to harness natural, large scale static charges.

I will save Dave S. the trouble of replying and do it for him:

" Yeth thith hath already been dithcuthed at length.  Your thnide commenths about rocket thientithtth do nothing to remedy your failure to exthplain how a thuperturbine can tranthmit torque or overcome cubic thcaling lawth.  Prepare to meet your doom ath the world patheth you by..."

There, how did I do?
:)))

Had anyone seen a resource for this type of vehicle?

At kFarm yesterday, for the AWE Documentary cameras, we flew the MegaKiteSat (3.5m dia AWT) as a WECS under the MiniMothra kite arch. Wind and lighting were perfect for kite and camera, in a spring pastoral landscape. The AWES launched and flew quite grandly. As if on cue, the neighbor's longhorn cattle escaped into the kite field and had to be herded by a tall-bike away from the experiment.

This improv. rig shows how handy AWES modular swapping is. Mono-Mothra is next for testing (1000ft2), perhaps later today. The electric drill drives we are using for generators have a quirk: we overlooked the speed control in modern units, which which must have been breaking down by the reverse current, or acting as a dropping diode, since we still got an output before. Our previous hacks zip-tied the triggers down, and we never looked inside closely. We seem to have burned out the unit yesterday, since it has stopped generating.

Worse, we are also in doubt about kite trickle charging the utility grid recently, since its been noted that our classic GE meter was not finely adjusted, crawling all along, and we had AC hot wire reversed to the grid-tie. Its not sure what happened, but we must redo the feat, but this time with a digital meter interface that will present better data. Hurry and claim this "easy" AWE first before we again do, in the next day or so...

The fundamental method of kiting with a paravaning water kite while having human transport at mid tether is in public domain.   Particulars of the paravane, control, and other details are ever open to creative improvements that might include novelty for protection. 

Hi Dave Eth
Yes I knew you would be unable to resist responding to this.  And that you'd have to scold me as though YOU are the wind energy authority, while I know nothing.  And of course in your mind it is all about "credentials", with the entire field of AWE amounting to empty statements of grandeur combined with a personality contest. 

My rocket scientist friends began as fellow UCI students who got jobs at Edwards Air Force Base decades ago, and more rocket scientists we've met since.  I now live in the Mojave desert, which is a treasure trove of rocketry and experimental aviation, as well as wind buggying etc.

Here's what I think is funny:
You list a whole big group of people you call "rocket scientists", but then it seems their credentials fall flat - they seem to have no real advantage over the rest of the unwashed humanity who can't think their way out of the paper bag of nonworkable or just ineffective AWE systems.  Citing their credentials in the face of consistent failure would seem to be more of an embarassment than a badge of achievement.

The fact that you seem to think that all academics, or anyone with a college degree, would feel like the term "professor crackpot" applies to them, personally, is just not so.  Real science and engineering has always thrived on skepticism and insistence on a "prove it to me" attitude.  Even most people who exhibit strong Crackpot tendencies are usually unable to see this themselves, as it is a self-perpetuating delusion.  Ignoring facts is a habit that is seldom broken.  Most crackpots will agree about the prevalence of crackpots, but assume the term does not apply to them.

You have to understand something:  We real wind energy people make fun of idiotic wind energy devices all the time.  We no longer have to discuss the details - we all know what makes the ideas so stupid.  These days we typically just post a link and a quick comment such as "'nuf said". which I read just last week.

Today I read another mocking post of one more "breakthrough" wind turbine.  One of us windy's posted the link:  Here's his post.  It starts out sounding like a country song::
*****************
"I was traveling in Texas to pick up my new bees for my hive and decided to stop for lunch in Seymour. After I turned off of the main highway I was shocked to see several contraptions that looked like a discard from Mad Max, but they were turning in the wind.
It appears that someone took a list of the best and worst parts of every wind generator design and then went to unusual lengths to pick the worst of the two in each case and combine them into one design. The result appears to be an unbelievably horrible design. And they appear to be selling them.
They are shrouded drag-based machines turned on their side with no tail (apparently wind orientation is by motor drive) the size of a small two-story house, made of tons of steel, and yet they sweep about 60 square feet of wind.
I took some pics and video, but don't know how to post them, but check out the crazy ideas on their webpage at http://www.kenningglobal.com/ Funnel%20wheel.htm . Anyone know any redeeming qualities of them?
Please don't hold this against Texas... they must be from elsewhere! :-) "
*****************
Now you and all YOUR professor crackpot rocket scientists would probably take this device seriously and begin seriously analyzing it for its immense potential.  But, like a mathematician would not need to strain his brain to analyze the statement 2+2=6, real wind people do not need to analyze dumb wind ideas - you just look at them and see 10 major problems and do not need to take the time to list them - we can all see the problems.  They do not need to be stated.

Most everything you have seen in the field of AWE so far is mostly just..., well....  dumb.  (sorry)  :)

By the way, thanks for answering my question about the kite.  You know I am just busting your chops, right?

Thanks for digging that one up Joe!
Ya gotta love the artwork in those old patents.
Note, though, while sailing ships and windmills had centuries before transitioned to "crosswind", this contraption looks like a downwind machine.

David