The main key word in this report is:offshore.

PierreB

Dmitri:
Nice to hear the reasoning behind that, but 70 Watts per hour does not make sense, in the context used here.
The only context in which such a unit would make sense would be if you were, say, increasing power by 70 Watts per hour (first derivative of power), say with solar as the sun came up, or with wind if the wind were increasing throughout the day.

"Watts per hour" is simply a unit that does not make sense, and is not recognized by anyone, anywhere.
Language used wrong, or imprecisely, can reveal that the thought behind it is wrong or incomplete; Incomplete thinking results in incomplete language.
There is no such thing as "watts per hour" in the context used, as far as I can see. Therefore the statement is meaningless. I'd have another go at it if I were you.

If there is one thing that exposes the lack of understanding of wind energy by would-be newbie inventors, etc., it is the lack of even grasping the units used

You see it every day in press releases: "Windfarm X can power 1000 houses per day" - oh really? So when that day is over, it can't power any more houses? How many houses can it power per minute? Oh also 1000 houses? How 'bout per year? Oh really, same 1000 houses? Hey maybe that term "per day" was meaningless in the first place?
Could have been left out?
Maybe the windfarm can simply power 1000 houses, indefinitely.
Power is energy per unit time. I think this was covered in 11th grade.

Language mis-used this way indicates a lack of understanding on the part of journalists, but we engineer-types don't expect journalists to get units right. We do however expect engineers and inventors to know the basic language of the art to which they purport to aspire.

If anyone wants to be taken seriously by engineers or even workers in the field who know better, get your units correct. Consult your high school physics textbook if necessary.

:)
Doug Selsam

Me and my big mouth.
"Should work the first time"...
Well for 3 days of light winds, the kite flew great, but not quite enough pull to keep the propellers from hitting the ground (could not consistently elevate one end of the driveshaft enough that it wasn't occasionally dipping down to Earth), and there wasn't enough wind to really spin up the props consistently anyway.

Today I noticed the winds were good, with the regular turbines around here cranking out the juice and spinning the meters backwards.

We went to "film" me taking a kite out of the back of my van whereupon it flew away as the string burned my fingers before I could let go, then the kite reached the end of the string and snapped it.
The roll came scooting by and I grabbed that, and it pulled real hard, looking like the kite was ready to fold in half, with me leaning back, then the string snapped again, and we can't even find the kite.

Never even got it reattached to the driveshaft.
We spun the new Superturbine(R) Sky Serpent with 21 hand-carved props (28" diameter) by attaching the upper end to a portable steel stairway on wheels (we call it the Stairway to Heaven), and it worked fine but nothing new about that, then I realized that my engineering student interns from New York had not actually atttached the driveshaft to the generator, but had not told Doug about that, so it was just jammed together and not really attached. I often note that not much gets done around here unless I do it with my own 2 hands - so many flipper-people! Their hands don't work! Maybe I can go find that kite but it really went sailing away.

I need to get ahold of a kite that has lots of lift and can withstand high winds, say up to 40 mph. A flexifoil or stack thereof would seem to be a good choice. I'm asking for any recommendations for a brand or source for a flexifoil (or other recommended kite) that can lift say 10 or 15 lbs? more?

Sorry to Mr. North of NASA since I was bragging to him that it would work the first try. Back to the ole' drawing board!

Doug S.

Did anyone see a price for this report?

I have a flexifoil, It is high strung and has almost no idea which way is up. You have to drive it with both lines almost constantly. I don't think that is what your looking for. I don't know of any dual or quad line kites that are naturally real stable. I suspect that a simple delta may be your best bet as far as bang for the buck and stability. You might also want more than one size for different wind ranges. Stackable may be good.

Brian

I noticed that journalists can get a copy for free?

Hallo to everyone, it's the first time I write.

Thanks Doug. Since you know our intent, can you compose the words you think would be best to meet that intent?

-Dimitri
801-810-5709

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "Doug" <doug@... That route was tried by me a good while ago; I have not received a reply. The notice mentioned qualified journalist. JoeF

For anyone who isn't in the SF Bay Area's KQED territory, it will be available online after it airs.

"The QUEST team would like you to know that QUEST's TV story,
Airborne Wind Energy,
is set to premiere on KQED next Wednesday, September 14th, as one of the segments in the episode."

"The episode will air Wednesday, September 14th at 7:30 pm on KQED 9 & KQED HD on Comcast 709.
The segment will then be available for online viewing at
www.kqed.org/quest
Here's a description of the episode - feel free to share it with your friends, colleagues, or email listservs/newsletters:
QUEST explores the potential of wind energy and new airborne wind turbines designed to harness the stronger and more consistent winds found at higher altitudes."

Upward to the Higher Wind!

PJ

Hi Dimitri:
Well I'm not sure you DO know the intent.
If you DID, it probably would not be that hard to put into words.
I think you THINK you know the intent, til it's time to write it down, then you get stuck, because the exact intent was never actually clear to start with.

This is not unusual: we think we have a general idea of what we mean, but when put to the test, the details are sometimes fuzzy.
Would we say that a system must produce 70 Watt-hours (.07 kWh) each hour?
Does that each hour must start at the first second?
Or can that hour be plucked out anywhere from the data? Any contiguous hour of time?

Say you produce 1 kWh in the first half-hour, then zero for the next hour, then back to producing well for the next 5.5 hours... can someone cite your hour (0.5 hrs - 1.5 hrs) of no power and disqualify the entry? Or would that contiguous hour have to be one of seven pre-defined hours as counted from the beginning? So you could have an hour (or more) of no power, as long as it fell in the middle of the integer hour count somewhere, rather than lining up with it? Does that make sense? Is that what you mean? Or, looking more closely, do you know what you mean?

And this thing about "brute force"... What is that, disqualifying anything simple that actually works? If something using "brute force" outperforms a Rube Goldberg contraption, should not the "contest" take that is stride and admit that some "brute force" technique is the best we can do so far?

And even calling the results of 3000 years of turbine evolution "brute force" accurate? (Is the term "brute force" just "name-calling"?) Is not a drag machine "brute force" whereas spinning airfoils represent "finesse", or do we want to turn logic on its head at every turn, always in denial?

Anyway, I do think, if you figure out what you ARE trying to say, saying it is not really so hard. The hard part really IS figuring out what you mean, just like the hard part of having a system that works is figuring out what to do, more than doing it.

Of course even if you DO figure out what to do, someone has to build it and test it. Then develop it further. Details details details. I've had machines up for years of troublefree operation before we learned the weak points. That is where if even the national labs cannot build any simple new thing (flipper people - helpless to use their hands) what chance do we really have by trying to include them?
If you wanted to start a new band, would you think it could only happen with a government music grant? Has any successful band started with a grant? How many successful products, in reality, came about due to some "program", "mandate", or "promise" from a bureaucracy

Next time you're thinking about trying to include ARPA-E, ask yourself, or ask them (if you expect to get an answer):
"What's your track record ARPA-E? Are you at ARPA-E worthy of (wasting) our time? Our energy? Our money? Tell us of a problem you have solved so far. (?) Give us an example of an important energy problem you have solved, how long it took to solve it and how much money was spent.

More to the point, calculate how much time and energy you have sapped from innovators, versus results you have produced. Seem a bit lopsided?

I think you will find that they have produced nothing and are unlikely to ever produce anything. If they were so smart, they would be contacting US, taking the initiative, not passively sitting back issuing "solicitations" and then not following through, offering excuses instead of doing what they said.

I stopped with those bozos after the first interaction turned out to be a lie on their part: Send us a concept paper and we will analyze it and respond." They responded with an excuse: "We were overwhelmed: this was a learning experience". Well it was not a learning experience for the 3000 companies who wasted their resources of money, time, energy, and focus, to cough up what ARPA-E demanded.

It was an utter waste of time and energy and it SLOWED DOWN progress. Typical of so many official programs that end up having the exact opposite of their intended outcome. Dashing hopes and wasting peoples' time is unproductive from all angles.

Don't waste your time with idiots - at any level! You do not have the time to waste!

Doug S.

Dr. Jianjun Zhang/ Skywind, Inc. & Guangdong High-Altitude Wind Power Technology shows a very interesting method and realization with possibilities for any altitudes.After my own trials and readings (videos,texts...) about crosswind motion,I saw the average power of an average soft kite (L/D = 4) seems to be only (because of many losses with crosswind motion) 5 or 6 times the average power for a static lift-and-drag-based kite with the same area.A high profiled kite (for example L/D = 8) would have a power increasing by factor of 4 in crosswind motion:it is not so much:a drag-based design does the same thing with an area x 20 or 24,and probably a lesser weight like DaveS remarks.

So,like JoeF often remarks,drag can be a friend.

Advantages for a scheme like it:simplicity,scalability,simplified location for planes,and also maximization of the aerial space,much more than for any crosswind systems because of their losses per unity of swept area.Nor the space is not free and is a component for ROI. Other advantage:power is more regular than for a crosswind motion,so a consistent power is easier to obtain with phase shift of several units into a farm.

On the other hand implementation of crosswind systems can be interesting for some market niches.Morever the ratio power+/power- (reel-out/in) should be normally better since kite area is lesser for a same power.In the case of enough regular power is obtained during loops or figure-8 (is it really possible without a degradation of the global performances?),crosswind motion could be more interesting.If no an exact synchronization of the units must be obtained if one wants avoid expensive means of temporary storages like ultracapacitors,hydraulic cylinders,flywheels...

PierreB

http://flygenkite.com  (a crosswind system!) 

We need to build and test many systems at low cost at a high speed.
They can even be disposable if they get to a next step.
It;s the new paradigm in scientific experimentation (or was a few years back) trying a LARGE number of new things FAST - quick and dirty - and getting on with it.

It was a real revelation to me (early on, til I got over the disappointment) that the big labs conduct essentially no experiments, try nothing truly new, and are mired in expensive programs to slightly adjust the status quo, through a thousand meetings and fossil-fueled flights around the world to conferences.

Conferences where the people who normally sit around in small rooms without windows, in front of computer screens, doing nothing, all fly to the same city to sit around in a bigger room with no windows, looking at a bigger computer screen, doing nothing, together. Ah togetherness... So reassuring. You may be doing nothing all day, but so are all these other people - hey let's talk about how to get more funding!

I think I'm gonna go out in the shop and sand some blades on an old Superturbine(R) that I'm refurbishing, preparing for a visit from a big CEO.

With many related ways to do AWE outlined, I can only move through the possibilities at a snail's pace.

If only we had some sort of national program to pull out all the stops and try a bunch of new clean energy ideas! (Oh I know they SAY we do...) I mean including people who can and will DO stuff not just flipper-people stuck in paperwork-land...

That's the tough part - the powers that be are addicted to paperwork and no progress. You can't convince them that a concept can be tried out with working prototypes built and tested in less time than you can put together the proposal to do it on paper.

All that money spent on conferences and technical reviewers - such a complex and byzantine system of funding ideas: It costs them so much to even decide whom and what to fund that they don't want to deal with less than a million bucks, whereas great experiments can be conducted for hundreds of dollars, or maybe thousands, in a day or two, using those two things at the ends of our arms (hands), and a few power tools...

OK time to go use my hands and get a new type of turbine working again...

:)
Doug S.

Yes, Doug, it is not a good situation, but we are doing our very best, believe it or not.  Have you ever watched 6 ants hauling a crumb back to their nest?  Typically, one will be on top, with the others pulling in all directions.  However, a slim majority is pulling the right way.  If ants were a bit smarter, they would be much more effective, and if they were much stupider, they would not make it back to the nest at all.  Their society has evolved to the maximum complexity that the available intelligence can support.  So has ours, or perhaps a bit beyond in a chance overshoot.  Still, all talents may be useful.

A simple "no" would have worked.
I hate to give you more fodder but I'm wondering where you saw anything from me about brute force.

-Dimitri
801-810-5709

Hi Dmitri:
Just trying to help clarify ideas expressed here.
It was someone else besides you, who mentioned brute force.
I still maintain that:
1) crafting a contest might be harder than crafting a winning machine;
2) A contest is already naturally formed: "Just do it" (Nike);
3) One thing I've noticed is there are 1000 distractions, no end to them, no limit, they always "sound good". That's exactly how the big labs can spend so much money and time, over so many years, with so many talented people, and yet try nothing truly new, over all those years, in an era like this, in spite of officially reserving the position of trying new things for themselves: the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
"The ministry of new things has no department of new things"...
:)
Doug

Hi again Dimitri:
Things I wondered:
Is such a contest supposed to take place at a certain time and place where everyone shows up with their rig?

If so what happens if there is no wind on the scheduled day/hour/place?

Or is it an ongoing opportunity, anytime, any place, with a window of say a couple months in which anyone can complete a 7-hour performance regimen?

If a system runs continuously over a month, could that team pick out a 7-hour segment of the data and submit that as an entry?

Does the contest have to include launch or can the system already be up and running? A landing?

Who verifies that the data is good?

What parts of the system must be airborne?

Please forgive me if all this has been covered. Thanks for asking for my opinion.
:)
Doug S.

Every assumption that is made in compiling the competition rules limits
the scope of ideas that can be submitted and risks blocking a potential
winner. The rules therefore need to be as simple as possible.

The fundamental assumption that we cannot avoid is that we want a better
source of clean and cheap power. Wind has the potential to deliver that,
so any limitations on how the wind energy is harvested degrade the value
of the competition. Maybe the future is a variation on existing turbines
and specifying airborne technology could block help going to a valuable
idea. The only criterion that matters is the cost of the energy
produced. The winners must therefore be the systems that produce the
most kWh per dollar in a given test period.

To make the competition fair it is probably best to mount all systems on
the same test site for the same period. The systems must be shown to
withstand storm winds and handle sudden weather changes. Other test
conditions could be imposed, such as ice and snow resistance, but they
are more likely to degrade the value of the test by slowing it down. A
fallback test could be to measure the system's power curve. The problem
is that a power curve does not measure the response to rapidly changing
wind speeds and it does not test a system's reliability and whether it
is operational and generating power at every possible opportunity.

Measuring a system's cost is essential because most purchasing decisions
are based on cost. If the AWE systems we build are too expensive they
will not sell and giving prizes to such things would be a joke and would
damage the reputation of wind energy.

Another reason for taking cost into account is that it stops
organizations winning by simply spending more by using more expensive
materials. This thing should be about finding the best ideas and not
about who has the deepest pockets; like so many other competitions have
become.

The device cost can be determined by taking the mass of the different
materials used and multiplying by a typical cost per unit weight. Once
things are mass-produced their price is dominated by material costs. If
the test is at least 3 months, and wear rates are measured, it should be
possible to estimate maintenance costs. Operator costs are more
controversial. The target market for the system Visventis is initially
aiming for is rural areas where wages are extremely low. eg. Pakistan.
It is probably best if each competitor makes a case for the man-power
costs their system requires based on competition guidelines.

Before anyone can build a good system they need a good idea, and then
the money to put it into practice. The competition should cater for
those with good ideas but very limited resources. It should therefore be
run in phases. The first would be simply a theoretical proposition. The
prize would be enough cash to build at least one test system. (Maybe
$15-40k.) The next phase would be the testing of the prototypes. The
prizes for that would be sufficient to do further development. To get
this thing going as soon as possible it would be good to have an ongoing
campaign with prizes awarded every year. Publicity from early years will
encourage newcomers and give losers from previous years a chance to fix
their mistakes.

Robert.

Group:

I am new to your group. I did a search on the subject of structural blade design, but did not find any threads. If I overlooked them, please forgive me.

We are looking for suggestions and theories for ultralight blade designs, primarily for use in Airborne Wind Energy. If any of you know of any discussions or threads on this subject, please let me know.

We are currently developing small ultralight blades for small HAW prototype units for the military. Although we have a design that we are comfortable with as well as some alternative designs for even lighter and stronger performance, we are always looking for methods which might further improve the blades structural performance.

In a nut shell, the blades we are currently developing are foam core with an outer shell of carbon fiber or glass. The target weight of a 30" blade is under two pounds. We believe that it may be possible to manufacture the same blade under one pound.

Thank you.

Bret C

Welcome points, Robert.
=====================

This has crossed my desk:

• The open-to-any-tech  for ROI might be morphed in respect of your comment about material and its mass: open-to-any-tech contest for mass use:  All contestants are at one bare field.   No converting the soil to parts (like do not mine the iron of the soil to make beams, etc.).   Each contestant brings  50 kg or less of material to the field. Each contestant  aims to pump as much water as they might from a common pond up  and out the top of a 5 m vertically set  pipe (the water drops back out of the top and back into the common pond). The amount of water pumped is metered.  The most water pumped during 3 days wins.  Contestants may not connect to any artificial energy grid for powering their system.    
         Some will bring solar solutions; some will bring towered wind turbines; some might try to tap night-day temperature changes; others might combine solar-wind-temperature-radiation-?;   some will bring AWECS, etc.    All-comers!    Would AWE win? 
• 
  

Welcome Bret,

The following are speculative notes facing your quest:

Consider, perhaps

• Aerogels
• "Beyond aerogel" program-built nano matrices in aim to beat aerogel performance
• Honeycomb core with honeycomb constructed via nano-tensegrity geometries
• High-pressure helium or air inflated blades

Bret, stay in this forum with your AWE blade interests; there are more than a few who will parallel your interest.  Please let the editor of UpperWindPower know the date of your first steps into the AWE spectrum; thanks.

JoeF

I actually like the contest outline. Not that it is perfect. But there are so many things NOT wrong with it.

They are not real restrictive. The prizes are big enough to be worthwhile. They have a graduation where higher performance gets more money. You can boot-strap your way to a scale that is appropriate to the problem.
The tier structure makes it more innovator vs problem rather than innovator vs innovator.
Watt-seconds seem like a perfectly reasonable unit of measure. (But I am biased against the joule.) ;)

It looks like it is not going to be held at some strange place that only a few have ever been to where most of the money will be spent on hotel and travel.

I don't want to discount the criticisms because most of them have a lot of validity. But I thought that I should speak up and show my relatively insignificant support.

Brian

Hey Robert, you have many good ideas in there, most of which were tried and rejected with ARPA-E. Please see the previous posts about that. I think what we proposed meets most of your other basic requirements.

-Dimitri
801-810-5709

Doug. Please re-read the description of the competition we submitted. You'll find it covers most of your questions.

-Dimitri
801-810-5709

Hello Dimitri,

One of the difficulties I have is that it is not clear to me what
exactly has been proposed, and I think others in this group are in a
similar position. Is there information available that has not been
posted in this group?

Judging from what has been posted, the importance of judging the contest
on the cost of the energy generated has been missed. It is not my tax
dollars being spent but I thought it worth speaking up because in my
opinion judging the contest on any other criterion would greatly
decrease its value.

Robert.

I stand with the"many good ideas - most of which were tried and rejected."

To convice ARPA and other actors,we must create an unanimity in the group for different AWECS from members if they want.

For it I purpose an analysis of AWE from who wants,for example KiteLab,Doug Selsam,me (FlygenKite and other new ways for schemes),Dimitri, Bob,SkyMill Energy,JoeF,BobS, Bret,KiteGen and others.

PierreB

http://flygenkite.com

Bret:
This forum does not consider blades or other normal aspects of wind energy very often. This forum usually covers mostly flying kites and schemes for taking energy from the pull of the string.

Regarding Joe F.'s response to you:
Helium-filled blades is my invention.
U.S. Patent 6616402 claims 61, 62.
One might surmise that any entity truly serious about AWE should be contacting me on my helium-inflated blade invention.

You could use Hornet blades, already in production, already meeting the requested weight requirements. A few bucks each - I have hundreds here. Many other sources for blades as specified. Ironically, I think you may be the first person to ever breach the topic of where to get blades in this forum, which is very telling in itself.

When you say you are working on a HAW for the military, What is a HAW?
Do you mean a regular Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine?
How did you get to be developing one for the military if you don't even know how to make blades or where to get them? I mean wouldn't the military want someone who already knows what they're doing?

Wait til you get to overspeed protection. Most models take years to get this worked out, with many failures along the way, and most developers give up before mastering the art of overspeed protection, with too many burnt-out turbines. This train of discussion is lost on newbies, not even recognizing that overspeed will be the main challenge. Overspeed is your new challenge once you know how to make any power in the first place!

For every 1000 new turbine manufacturers, perhaps 1 survives past the "press-release" stage. Why? It's too hard! Professor Crackpot meets reality. ouch!

I could make blades for you, probably lighter than your specs. Good luck!
:)
Doug S.
714-749-3909

Dave S.:
Thanks for the heads-up.
Good show on Makani and Magenn.
:)
Doug S.

The three paragraphs outlining the competition was the entirety of what was finally proposed to ARPA-E after they rejected a more complex proposal which would have funded proposals for AWE systems. They only want to fund prizes for meeting challenges. We put together that proposal to be as inclusive as possible in the effort to build an AWE industry, not just fund a single winner.

-Dimitri
801-810-5709

Go ahead and design a prize competition that includes ROI and safety and see if you can get the DOE to agree to it.

We purposely kept the competition as simple as possible exactly so they WOULD agree to fund it.

-Dimitri
801-810-5709

Dave,

Unfavourable ROI will stop AWE getting adopted anywhere. Poor safety
will only stop AWE being adopted in countries that are rich enough to
get paranoid about such things. Most countries have a very different
view on safety than the US. Things like insurance and compensation
claims are a luxury (or more likely a mill stone) they cannot afford.
All the rules need to state is that the entries must comply with
national regulations. That includes a maximum flight height.

To give Dimitri his due, there was limited response from the members of
this group when the subject was first mentioned in May. Ideally ARPA
staff themselves should be encouraging debate on this forum, or another
set up for the purpose.

Robert.

Bret,

The link below may be relevant for you
<http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/OtherProjects/RenewablePower/AdaptiveTurbineBladesBlownWingTechnologyfor.aspx PAX looks like an interesting company.

Robert.

Suggestion: Keep this thread's replies on the history of inflated airfoils
whether for fixed or rotary installments.    Inflation of the airfoil or hydrofoil may be with air, helium, hydrogen, other gaes, oil, water, other fluids. Media of operation may be air, water, soup, other gases, atmospheres, oceans, etc.     

I do not have earliest mentions, uses,  or patents. Perhaps someone has done all this work already.   I will participate with others in making this thread robust over time with the hope to see the place in AWECS that inflatable airfoils may play.   Deflation and inflation is a binary that invites thoughts of control and system launching and terminating. 

The economics of using inflatable airfoils over hard blades or sail blades will sort products.    I have not been happy with $20 air mattresses because of leaks and repair; but I am open to plays for inflated airfoils in AWECS.

Pressure of inflation and pressure adjustment for various reasons will shown in the history. Ram-air inflation, wind-powered inflation, gas-generator for inflation, chemical reactions for inflation, form-forced (suction by form) inflation will come.   

Citations are invited.  Former studies.  What is in public domain?  What is not in public domain?

One may return to this post and its connected replies to continue the topic. A topic may grow quickly or over months or years.   Do search in our forum search tool to find "inflatable airfoil"  or "inflated airfoil".

JoeF

 

Their tags: ornithopter; orthopter, vibrocraft, enthopter,micro and mini flying machine,vertical take-off machine, airship, balloon , cushioncraft, waving wing, oscillating wing, Jukovsky-Knoller- Betz effect, Knoller-Betz effect, Katzmauer effect, reduction of aerodynamic drag, Gray paradox, positive aerodynamic interference.

================================================
Vortex Oscillation Technology Ltd

http://www.vortexosc.com/index.php?newlang=english

They have a Russian alternative set of files.

Discussion open.

 

 

Dave,

Too often I have seen those with a threatened vested interest use safety
as an excuse to block progress. Bird kills by turbines is an example. A
single car worth a thousand times less than a turbine is an equivalent
threat to avian life. Windows and cats are even worse. AWE is
threatening the oil, coal and nuclear industries. They already spill
dangerous chemicals into the environment. I cannot see AWE being worse
if we tried. Let us do all we can to keep on the thin line between being
over cautious and careless. Over caution will make AWE look more
vulnerable than it is.

Robert.

Didn't the FAA run out of money this summer?   How much longer do you think they can keep going?