On file:  http://kitepowerqld.com.au/kites-cutting-fuel-costs/

Steve McCormack from Kitepower Sydney

Welcome  

Reinhart Paelinck

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3A*&q=%22Reinhart+Paelinck%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

 

 

Thank you for the welcome :-)
There is an interesting pdf out there ( ;-) ) when searching for

http://www.google.be/search?hl=nl&safe=off&q=reinhart+paelinck+kite+power&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

In dutch, but you can always look at the images :-)

hint -

   Hi Reinhart Paelinck

         Prachtige werken, graag aan boord heb.
            
                                                   Daniël

---

Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. Learn more.

Zeer goede kunst en ideeën!
Dank u.
De wereld heeft de gelegenheid in je.

Reinhart has added good observations to the findings of his fellow Niederländische drachenautor Harm van Veen's buch "The Tao of Kite Flying". Reinhart's results-   Is a Kite's Weight Important? : The Kiteboarder Magazine   Long story short, the best kite is generally the lightest kite, scaling weight penalties matter greatly, & AWE starts betting on large heavy flygen kiteplanes stuck under 2000ft ASL are going to have problems making electricity cheaply. In common marginal winds they will even require more power than they can generate by desperate sweeping & will have to land (or crash) while the "real" kites work nicely.   This is a large window of opportunity for surfacegen membrane-wing concepts. Once AWECS get into strong upper winds the balance may eventually favor high mass & rigid construction, much as high performance gliders actually carry water ballast in romping conditions.

i wrote:

Ultralight airfoils for wind energy conversion 

instructed by Gianni Vergno,

applied for in June 2005.   Page count 22 in PDF format. File is in our group under Files/Sequoia/07000788.pdf  But clicking above linked title reaches the same.

Joseph,

Notice the gullwing, hmmm! Is it lofted with a balloon I see? Very nice. I think I see the next event to Gianni Vergnos' concept. A small modeling will tell all. Will report after the modeling. This one is exciting Joe.

Dan'l

USWindlabs requested on this forum that KiteLab Ilwaco develop & demonstrate suspended turbine arrays.     The World's First Gondola Turbine Array has been flying for days without mishap at KiteLab's cableway AWE research center. The array dynamics are quite nice; one can even loop the entire array like a jump-rope without fouling. The suspended turbines are built along KiteLab's well established AWE UltraTurbine (TM) pattern, but with a swivel to take wind from any direction.   Phase One is complete & the deliverables are presented below as links. Phase Two will fly the array on moving cableways from kites.   A video clip- http://energykitesystems.net/DaveSantos/gondola_turbines.AVI   Detail of the turbines- http://energykitesystems.net/DaveSantos/gondola_turbine02.jpg Detail of simple detachable gondola turbine hardware- http://energykitesystems.net/DaveSantos/gondola_turbine01.jpg   =======================  INVOICE:   To: USWINDLABS From: KiteLab Group Services:

Yahoo search project is not complete.
We here did not at first have message search.
Now we do.
Online, at Messages, there is a field for word search.
Try it.
We are approaching 1800 messages.
Quality and politeness has been a blessing.
Now we can more easily find that former message.

JoeF

There is now a major electric highway ,

but it is not yet charged from AWECS.

Seeking source of graphic, anyone?   Thanks.

http://energykitesystems.net/imagesSeekSource/SeekSourcePlease22.jpg

Shows on

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/archive/national-news/450704/

 

But seek artist or owning company involved.

 

Thanks,  DaveS.

Improved source   with excellent resolution of the graphic.

 

Hmmm. Very reminiscent of a Selsam Superturbine.

Dave & Joe, Thanks for this post
 
 
Damn interesting that Pete Lynn is consulting with Makani re KITEGEN of all things . . . . evidently somebody at Makani or at Google had the equivalent of an epiphany AND SAW THE LIGHT (re KiteGen).
 
 
I'm sure that all who are associated with AWE will hope that they succeed at this endeavour.
 
 
Harry

 

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To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: joefaust333@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:35:46 +0000
Subject: [AWECS] Re: Mini-farm

 

Hi Dave S.
Well I am a little confused that you seem to dismiss all I do while simultaneously trying to copy me in many ways. If I say "Superturbine(R)", you say "UltraKite(TM)" or "UltraTurbine(TM)".

If I introduce spaced rotors on a common axis and call it a "Superturbine(R)", taking the trouble and expense to regsiter the trademark at the USPTO, you attempt to implement similarly spaced rotors on a common axis and call it an "established UltraTurbine(TM) pattern".

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I guess I owe you a "Thanks!" :) The video you've provided is exactly 2 seconds long (?), and shows no power being produced, just a tangle of string and styrofoam propellers. The "detail of the turbines" JPG looks like just a photo from the video, that is as confusing to me as the 2-second video.

Neither the 2-second video, nor the "detail" JPG indicate how this assemblage is intended to work. I don't see any power on any meters that's for sure.

To call it "the world's first gondola turbine array", to the extent that a propeller can be called a gondola at all (?), does not take into account the fact that a utility-scale "clothesline" turbine was in fact built and tested in Tehachapi at Oak Creek windfarm many years ago. It was well-funded to be built at a reasonably large scale, with reasonable finish and attention to detail, not just a few handcarved foam props on a string in someone's backyard..
Guess what happened to it?
(3 guesses)
drum roll please
........
It was damaged in high winds.
Like almost every prototype turbine ever created that actually runs for any amount of time, the first strong wind destroys it.

Anyway, I just noticed that you've invoiced me for $50,000 for developing this and I'm supposed to license it, from you, for the L.A area, now.

Nice try Dave S. Some of these online groups DO attract their share of outright crackpots. I'm flattered that you're copying the style if not the substance of so much of what I do, at this point. This is very familiar - I had a guy like this on the small wind yahoo group who still e-mails me with weekly crackpot breakthrough theories and imitations of what I do that "seem" like the "style" of my work but are without substance, and miss the mark entirely. For anyone who would like to emulate the substance, rather than just the style, the patents are in place worldwide, based on government-funded research and years of real data, and serious licensing opportunities do in fact exist. Now is the time to get in on the ground floor.
:)
I've got one guess that what you're trying to achieve is to utilize the faster-than-the-wind downwind behaviour of the vehicle funded by Google/Joby to have propellers traveling downwind faster than the wind itself? What's the essence of the mechanism you're trying to achieve here? Theory? I'm sure others are curious too.

Your disclosure leaves the reader/viewer without any indication of how this thing is supposed to work at all. Anyway nice idea, I guess, whatever it is. Nice invoice. Very professional. I've received such invoices before, from wannabe crackpot inventors looking for a shortcut to developing a proper I.P portfolio based on a track record of real research and development.

There are no shortcuts. String and foam prototypes can be a first step, but usually prove little, and self-declared I.P. without protection sounds noble, but carries little weight with most parties.

Anyway, thanks for including me and USWINDLABS in your post - any publicity is good publicity and you did spell the name right.

So, how does this thing work now?
Thanks for being there and for all you do Dave S.
Doug Selsam
http://www.USWINDLABS.com
~<brawk!

Dave S.:
Thanks for explaining some of why a stack of smaller propellers is a better choice than 1 giant propeller. Superturbine(R) is "the integrated circuit of wind energy".
Doug S.

dave santos <santos137@...
****ALl roads lead to Superturbine(R)

but without the gross defect of a massive common drive-shaft.

***Yeah that "defect": a generator and a way to drive that generator - who could be bothered with such trivial details when you've clearly got a better alternative all worked out...

Each UltraTurbine (TM)

*** Where have I heard that term before? Oh wait, it must refer to an array of Superturbines!(R)

 can orient to wind form any direction, which a terrain hung SuperTurbine (R) cannot.

***Clearly you have a great-performing product for general consumption here...

It would be nice to see the earlier failed "clothesline" turbine array, for the "World's First" claim is a lonely boast. 

***Yeah it would be nice if you could acknowledge the work done before you but instead you know nothing of the history of wind energy, believing that every false, well-worn trail is fresh & untrodden...

True turbine ropeways can survive any storm by retreating as warranted.

**** Can you provide an example of such a "true turbine ropeway that has survived any storm by retreating"?
***Yeah we in wind energy are pretty weary of crackpots with their pinwheels...

The "Ultra" TM is clearly designed to Differentiate products far better than anything merely "Super".

****Yes your foam & string thingy's with no generators are clearly "better" than my highly-reliable, patented machines based on government-funded research, that power real homes now, through UL-listed inverters...

Do not confuse any of this with humorless imitation.

***If it weren't for the humor I would not be here talking to you...

Its also required of this Professional Engineering Mock-Up that it not actually generate electricity, much as Panamarenko destroyed his visionary airship as it unintendedly began to fly.

****Yes the crackpots always have a great excuse to not include one of those troublesome "generators"...

****Yes & I think you'd better check your butterfly net for holes...

Kitelab is proceeding with Phase Two ($200,000 Invoicable) under a cloud. This World's First AWE Contract Dispute may have to be arbitrated by AWEIA Inquisition,

****You're just the guy to conduct such an inquisition of silliness - Monty Python anyone?...
-Doug S.
*****Here in L.A., LA means LA - Go Lakers!...

KiteLab Group reserves the lucrative L.A. energy market.
***Oh go fly a kite....  

Flying monsters may be possible only at low altitude . . . like the Caspian Sea monster that flew using the ground effect.

Kite Gen istruzioni per l'uso a cura dell'inventore Massimo Ippolito II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXMUUEOq9xo
Seguito parte I
Following part I

Posting summary of what he said would be appreciated.
Thank you, anyone?
Spoken Italian

When a windfarm of VTOL flygens is forced to land* vertically all at once, the sudden electrical load will easily be greater than the farm's normal output. No grid manager is going to like such a supply/demand spike. Joby proposes carrying a UPS battery on each aircraft, which adds greatly to capital cost & flying weight. UPS on the ground is useless in the case of a tether failure. Joby further proposes ballistic parachutes, at least for its personal electric aircraft design (Joby Aviation).   Another electric VTOL flygen limitation will be burn-out risk of the motor/gens just before landing. Overworked copper coils will overheat; internal resistance & power demand will increase in a runaway reaction & burn-out or crash will follow, unless the motors are "oversized" or cooling supplemented. Not even a mere human-scale electric helicopter or VTOL airplane has yet been demonstrated & motor over-heating is just one of the scaling barriers.     * Landing forced by such causes as-

The technology needs access to pumped hydraulic storage or compressed air energy storage . . . located very close by.
 
 
Harry
 

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To: airbornewindenergy@yahoogroups.com
From: santos137@yahoo.com
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:01:09 -0700
Subject: [AWECS] Forced Landing of VTOL AWECS Arrays

 

Harry,   A smart-grid could also fill in supply, but these hardly exist. One's beer might be a bit warmer because a regional AWE failure caused your smart refrigerator to turn off for a few minutes.   More forced array landing scenarios-

3600TW 

PDF of 66 slides.

This is reminiscent of most Public Relations literature disseminated by new companies with new turbine designs.
The focus usually starts with "global warming", then discusses the vastness of the wind resource and how much energy is there to be had.
All great background to build "credibility" by citing a few "known facts" (?) taking up several pages to thereby numb the reader into submission, but none of that even IMPLIES that a new solution is at hand.

Then the thrust is how much cheaper the new technology will be than the old. Based on what exactly? A wish. I coined a new term, looking out from within the world of regular wind energy (where turbines produce power and are sold, installed, and used). That term is "Wish Turbine", for turbines that are based on a wish, rather than the actual wind.

The lack of any product for sale, at any scale, that anyone can test and put numbers to, with regard to cost or power output, is what is lacking here. If the theory is solid, there must be a way to offer a product based on it now. Even the scam turbine companies with their ubiquitous vertical-axis building-mounted designs usually have a photo of a non-operating sheet-metal contraption on a rooftop, somewhere, for sale, inclduing "territories", though data is usually absent.

Imagine a small wind turbine company in say the 1930's with a concept for a Wincharger for the farm. Imagine if year after year, all they talked about was the future possibility of incredibly large turbines, and all the possibilities they hypothetically (at that time) could offer. But no small version was ever built or sold. Year after year. At some point you might wonder: If the theory is so solid, why no small product for sale?
But then one might start to notice the number of theories touted, with none being quite settled on. One realizes that what is being defined is an engineering challenge more than a solution that is worked out.

We've got a Wincharger at our test site that looks like it operated for many years. They produced electricity for many homes. Nobody waited years or decades while endless talk took place. There was no "throwing spaghetti at the wall" approach that endlessly discussed myriad possible turbine concepts. No instead, there was a simple turbine on a small tower with overspeed protection built in and they built and sold them to many people to power their homes (radio & a few lights for example). The theories were backed up with working examples. That proved that no holes remained in the theory.

Once people could see that these wind turbine generators worked, larger and larger ones were built. The few large ones that were built too big, too soon, had problems and were shut down (lack of learning curve).
An example of that would be the giant megawatt steel turbine built at Grandpa's Knob.

But what we're seeing here is over-the-top strong in talk, perhaps we could even call it hype, but without any working example that anyone can buy and operate and take data from, at any scale, for any use, no matter how long we wait.

Let's realize that placing rotors on blades, so that the blades push the rotors through the air at high speed, is an old idea. Connecting two or more circling kites at the center is an old idea - it is how wind turbine rotors got their start 2000 years ago in the Greek islands.

Here are a few problems I see with this approach:
Mach number: Say your kite travels at 120 mph. Say your wind turbine rotor is designed to operate at a tip speed ratio of 6, considered average. Now your tips are breaking Mach 1. If you think today's turbines are noisy, I can tell you that when blades attain even a significant fraction of mach 1, they get noisy. If they attain mach 1, they emit vapor that looks like smoke and the sound is like a series of explosions.

The blade speed & finish, and amount of swept area required for a given output at a give speed have been worked out for decades. Calling a blades a kite doesn't really change the fact that the basics of wind energy remain in place, despite the wish that a completely new technology has somehow emerged.

Note the retraction of most efforts toward merely using a tower, circular paths, tethering the kites at the center, etc. Somewhere along the line one might note that the most ambitious, stratospheric efforts seem to hedge back to slight variants on a propeller mounted on a tower.

I'd like to use Magenn as an example here. With all due respect to anyone who at least tries something, and builds something, wind energy people can easily point out flaws with the magenn design, starting with the fact that it embodies the lowest-efficiency design known, making it more expensive, and even less efficient, by wrapping it around a helium balloon. But facts don't seem to matter in this art. If I insisted on seeing a power output curve for a Magenn turbine, I'd be considered a bully. I'd be the one out of line to even ask how much power their machine produces. I'd be the one considered too harsh if I insisted on seeing just what a Magenn machine has done for anyone's electric bill. I'd be the bad guy if I insisted on seeeing the numbers for how long a Magenn system has operated at any one site qithout problems. If I insisted on seeing evidence that a Magenn turbine has survived 70 MPH winds, I'd be the one called on the carpet to explain my cynicism.

Yet Magenn can go on and on talking about global warming and birds and the vastness of the wind resource, with absolutely nothing (so far as I know - please correct me) to offer anyone to help their energy needs AT ALL. Don't you think if any of these contraptions could make anyone any useful power you would hear about it?
How many millions of dollars has been raised by mentioning a vast wind resource and predictable, regular, global temperature swings, in lieu of any evidence that one has a legitimate energy solution? When are the purveyors called out on the carpet publicly to answer to the facts:
At no point is Magenn (or any of the rest, so far as we know) asked:
1) How much can I buy your system for now?
2) What is the power curve?
3) What's the longest-lived installation you can point to?
4) What is the O & M cost of operation?
5) What is the Return on Investment, in a class 5 or class 6 wind resource?
6) Could such a machine even survive in a true industrial-level wind resource?
7) What is the highest-rated windspeed the system has been demonstrated to survive?
8) What is the energy per month in a given wind class location?
9) How long can the machine be expected to last?
10) What is the warranty: How many years?
11) How long is the deliver lead time?
12) Can we talk to a happy owner please?

In short, after reading years of multi-million dollar hype, try asking ANY of these "advanced" wind energy companies ANY pertinent question that is normally considered basic information about ANY wind turbine, and you will come up COMPLETELY empty-handed.
I'm just sayin'...
:)

http://friendfeed.com/remixtures/d5036612/kitegen-towards-patent-commons-for-high

 

Is there a primary comment from KiteGen?

Fagiano, L.;   Milanese, M.;   Piga, D.;  
Dipt. di Autom. e Inf., Politec. di Torino, Torino, Italy 

This paper appears in: Energy Conversion, IEEE Transactions on
Issue Date: March 2010
Volume: 25 Issue:1
On page(s): 168 - 180
ISSN: 0885-8969
INSPEC Accession Number: 11138234
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/TEC.2009.2032582 
Date of Publication: 08 December 2009
Date of Current Version: 18 February 2010
Sponsored by: IEEE Power & Energy Society 

Though most of us have seen the first published version of the paper,
I am not yet seeing what tweaks were made for the 2010 version.

 

In any case the site at

http://www.kitenergy.net/home.php

is freshened ....inviting a thorough review by those in AWE !

 

The AWE Consortium (AWEC) claimed to "unite the stakeholders of the international airborne wind energy industry into a single, focused and independent voice", but several issues in fact divide the field-

Dave S.
I may make fun of some of your shizzle but at least you are building real 3-D flying things. Don't give up. Bureaucracies quickly get too bloated to respond to much of anything, or do anything besides talk, using a lot of jet fuel and a lot of money to fly lots opf big talkers to conferences, where they can reinforce the notion that sitting in a chair doing nothing is progress, since they all sit in chairs together doing nothing together. Try finding a single new type of turbine built or tested by any federal lab in the last 30 years for example. The breakthroughs will continue to come from peoples' garages.
Who exactly IS AWEC? Is that us or someone else? Sorry for not paying closer attention to acronyms, but I've been busy doing wind energy research designing, manufacturing, testing, and selling turbines. Until I see anything flying that returns any value in the form of power, I'm not too worried about which group of big talkers has glommed onto what series of 4 capital letters. I do maintain that my designs would do the job, and wish I had a few more hours in the day to build the flying versions, but we'll get to it.
Doug S.

Airborne Wind Energy Consortium Doug, You should buy a Diamond Membership, it rocks ;^)

50 + 15 + 5 = 70   Sorry for the math error...   Note: SkyWindpower's funding is also part of the AWE Consortium total but i have no info about it.

AWECS noise will range from whisper quiet to a mighty hornet roar. Several design factors are making noise an issue including-

Usually any wind turbine blade tip speed over 200 mph gets pretty noisy. This suggest lower tip-speed-ratio (TSR) propellers for using 50-100 mph + winds. Which implies a higher-solidity rotor (more blade area filling the circle) which implies more wake vorticity, which implies lower efficiency. Also the turbine blades would need to be at a higher level of strength like an airplane propeller suitable for 24/7/365 use. That's a lot of punishment for even a metal propeller let alone a cloth kite. Or did I hear someone had decided to use a hard surface? How much time & money could be saved by asking people who know about wind energy?
Doug S.

Dale C. Kramer spoke of using two of his ultralights in coupled kited free-flight (no tether to the ground), one at each end of the soared tether; each end of the tether would have one of his aircraft.  Each aircraft would be in its own airs and would be flown to maintain desired tether tensions and whole-system flight path. At each aircraft could be energy-mining turbines; the energy could be used aloft or stored aloft or sent via powerbeams to other aircraft or ground receptors at sea or on land.

New looks at web of Makani Power, just up!
http://www.makanipower.com/

Its a beautiful web site whose contents clearly show the promise of kite energy. How sweet to see Miles Loyd get to finally witness a working crosswind power AWECS.   They are not showing a good solution yet for take-off & landing. The pop-gun launch is a real dog, it puts a high G cycle on everything. Don't expect to see an aircraft reliably tail-land on a gun barrel. Apparently they still drop tether & land conventionally. MP's flying wing mock-ups sport little landing legs, but one sees the flight prototypes struggle with VTOL climb, especially as they grow.   Capital/operational/maintenance costs are very high & reliability low with bleeding-edge designs of this class. Expect MTBF to be as little as a few hours or a couple of days for a long time. They must now earn wings in the safety-critical real world. Scaling will be slow & painful. These slickly marketed companies must begin to honestly report problems & mishaps, as academia & aviation do.   Hurry up with your Low-Complexity AWE solutions, or Google will eat you alive ;^)