The wind here is quite variable. It is average on the power
potential maps. However, the only water shortage we have is when the
shallow ponds become solid ice. A few meters of depth should be
sufficient to keep hydro storage reservoirs liquid. Our underground
caverns would probably leak air back to the natural gas formations.

Bob Stuart

Compressed air storage is often much cheaper than pumped hydraulic storage. The natural gas industry uses giant reciprocating compressors and gas turbine engines use turbo-compressors that can both be driven by electric motors.
 
Most large-scale hydraulic pumping and turbine equipment is often custom made. Voith-Hydro does manufacture ship propellers that can be adapted to pumped hydraulic storage and pumping hydraulic turbines do exist . . .  the same turbine can be used to generated electric power or to pump water to higher elevation.
 
There is growing need to connect large-scale wind farms to large-scale energy storage technology . . . otherwise powerful winds can blow overnight at various locations and wind turbines have to remain idle.
 
 
Harry
 

---

I say there is one category that is most important: A category containing anything that works, period.
With a thousand hypotheticals, and nothing that can be pointed to as a working system, I think it's premature to subdivide this category.
Next, people will want to spend all day discussing which exact altitudes the various categories include.
But what I think people are missing is:
It is just all words. With nothing working, why go on and on categorizing hypothetical systems?

Wind energy has grown from small and medium turbines (that were always called large turbines at the time), to JUMBO turbines in a few years. Any categorization of "low height, medium height and high height" would have to be redefined every year as machines got larger.

Does it not occur to anyone here that any working system will most likely start out as low-altitude or terrain-enabled, slowly proving its way to higher altitudes? Like all other technologies, it will likely occur in baby steps? Why pre-categorize, when the energy should be spent getting anything to work at all? Of course a viable system will likely start out low and then get higher.

How many years does anyone here think it will be, before there is a single useful flying wind turbine of any type available for purchase?
What if it is at a height that is at a border of where two people disagree about whether it is medium-high altitude or high-altitude? Have we just discovered a new all-day activity for a whole team of people, endlessly discussing which words most appropriately describe the system?

I say get something working and worry about the fine points of definitions at such time as there are several systems operating at different heights. This is a typical example of overdoing "the all-talk format" - premature in my opinion.
Doug Selsam

======== Moderator:
Vote, comment, suggest:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/polls/1industry.html
=====================================================

I see a typical thrust here to get off-topic:
Topic 1) generating wind energy, advantageously using new technology that reaches higher than existing turbines;
Topic 2) improved energy storage technology.

The two are often confused and juxtaposed. Often it is in the effort to find an improved wind technology, which is faltering even in the sense of providing continuous power, with a first desperate grasp at completely changing lanes and moving into energy storage as a reaction to the noncontinuous nature of the proposed scheme.

Reality:
1) To this date, lead-acid batteries still provide the lowest-cost energy storage besides pumped hydro.
2) Any improved energy storage technology could find an immediate HUGE market for peak-shaving on the grid, buying cheap power at night and selling it in the day.

Discussions of wind energy with newbies often diverges onto this topic of storage due to the intermittency of the wind. Existing windfarms are addressing it but I haven't seen any significant breakthrough in storage.

I'd say revolutionizing wind turbine design is enough of a challenge without trying to simultaneously out-think everyone involved with improved energy storage simultaneously, but hey maybe with the level of genius I see here, I am mis-underestimating the situation.

Newbies ALWAYs want to talk about this.
The conversation usually goes something like this:
"Now these wind turbines.... when there's no wind, they aint makin' no power, correct?"
"mmmm-hmmmmmm" is the response (as you know what's coming next):
" Well I wuz thinkin'... you know 'bout how ta store that power?..."
"mmmm-hmmmmmm" you think to yourself waiting for the next shoe to drop

I don't know why it is but I guess it is just human to fall into all the lowest-common-denominator slots - I guess we all do it in our own way. Let's just remember if anyone can come up with an improved energy storage technology, there is a huge and known business and innumerable applications for it having nothing to do with flying wind turbines. Might I suggest that you force yourself to solve the problem at hand rather than diverging into other topics?

This is just more of the same-old same-old for people in wind energy to hear.

Maboomba!
Doug Selsam

Welcome:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/polls/1industry.html

Attachments :

Doug,

 

It seems so obvious--but then again, everybody else's must seem so to themselves, too.  ;-)

Airborne = Borne by the air = Supported via aerodynamic forces.**

A windmill on a tower is not aerodynamically supported. A Selsam turbine stack supported at both ends from mountain tops is not aerodynamically supported. These are not AWE devices. Now, tilt the turbine back, add a tail and it becomes an auto-gyro, supporting some/much/all of its mass; NOW it's aerodynamically supported. It's AWE.

Kites are AWE, autogyros are AWE, two-kite systems are AWE. Magenn is AWE, so long as some portion of its lift is aerodynamic (it is). Turbines, whether made of carbon fiber, sailcloth or banana leaves--if wholly supported by towers, buildings, blimps or by elephants holding hands in a chorus line--are not AWE. Defining AWE does not rely on altitude (above sea level, above the ground or the above the local constabulary) Altitude is not an integral part of the nomenclature of what we do. It is important, but only internally.

Selsam systems are sometimes AWE and sometimes not. Doesn't diminish these systems' value whether or not they're  AWE; it's just sometimes yes, sometimes no. OutLeader and SkySails are definitely AWE--they are aerodynamically supported; deliver their power as tension over distance divided by time (hmmm, sounds like "power" to me), rather than as electricity, or potential energy (as in head of water = pumped hydro). Doesn't matter. AWE = aerodynamically supported; the form of power delivered is ancillary.

Second bit of nomenclature; "Kites have strings." AWE includes tethered structures, and does not include free-flying structures. I don't care if the tether is a torsion tube or a bit of string; I don't care of the tether leads to the earth, or to a moving ship, or to a second kite--if it's aerodynamically supported and flies from a tether, it's AWE.

My 2 cents,

Dave Culp

** In my universe, AWE does not include aerostatic lift-supported devices, but only if 100% aerostatic--systems such as Magenn are AWE, because at least a portion of their support is aerodynamic--and they fly from tethers. I won't argue this however; if the consensus says "aerostatic" = "airborne" = "AWE,"  I won't quibble.

this is what i've been thinking all along!

Attachments :

varidro1.jpg

The attached jpgs show a small varidogue rigged on a pulley loop under a pilot/lifter kite in drogue mode & furled lifting mode. The lifter was a Premier 14 Power Sled & the Pirana Drogue a Gomberg product. A larger drogue or smaller pilot-lifter would have matched even better.   This rig explored potential advanges-

This concept can be placed in a ravine in a mountain that predominantly receives unidirerctional wind. The precedent for such a layout would be aeriel tramways that carry people up and down the sides of mountains . . . with upper and lower cable car stations.
 
How do I contact Manuel Muoz? I can inciude his concept in a forthcoming article on wind power.
 
 
Harry
 

---

Dave C.: There is a wind turbine company in the Reno/Lake Tahoe area that was called "Appropriate Energy", now called "Synergy". Their turbine is tower-mounted gyrocopter that flies at the top of the tower. It lifts to a harmless position in very strong winds as overspeed protection. (As I have mentioned, unknown to members of this group, overspeed protection is the single biggest challenge in wind turbine design, but you have to make power first before you find out about that little issue, he he he)).

There's a great story of one flying away, off the tower, down a valley, and back up the valley, shopping off the top branches of many trees of a tea plantation, in Taiwan I believe. The funny part was how fast the engineers could run.
If you read my US patent 6616402, you'll see that the supporting structure of my turbnines is called a "tower/driveshaft" because it is a rotating tower that supports the rotors, but in the wind they also are flying in many cases.

There's no cutoff between tower-mounted, terrain-enabled, and airborne wind energy. Additionally, you're assuming that everyone's systems are supported by the air, which is not the case when we're discussing terrain-enabled wind energy that is at a high height.
Of course we wouldn't want to use the word "high height" because it doesn't sound impressive enough, right? How about just "high"?

Do you know what word people in wind energy use, to refer to the act of running a wind turbine? "Flying". We say "What are you flying?" meaning what turbine is on your tower. That's because the blades are already using the principles of lift and flight and when the blades "fly" (as opposed to stalling) they assume a mode of unbelievable power and speed. Much like a 2-cycle engine hitting its power-band.

I think I am done playing word games - not productive. Someone needs to even figure out what categories are included in this group I think. Sure a turbine not actually supported by the air is not "airborne" which is why the words "high altitude" were considered more appropriate for this group, as I was told. If the same exact machine then has a kite or balloon at one end, or is adjusted to fly, it becomes airborne, like an appropriate energy gyrocopter/turbine, in production for at least 10 years that I know of
.
Appropriate Energy is a working flying turbine that has sold many units that I doubt anyone in this group has ever heard of.
Imagine if someone bypassed a workable and useful system because someone else wouldn't call it the right word. This is all silly after a while.
Dave, it seems to me you have a usable concept with your traction kite/sails for boats. I don't know why there isn't a product out of that people can buy today, or is there? Maybe its being blogged to death rather than developed.
Oh man I gotta get out of the blog-o-sphere lest I remain here all the live-long day!
Late---
Doug Selsam

==========================Moderatore here:
http://www.synergywind.com/

This thread invites discussion of AWECS that horizontally set the axis of rotation while remaining VAWT assemblies. History, patents, installations, plans, engineering appraisals, etc. Darrieus instructed in 1925 French patent and 1926 US patent about the "traverse" to stream aspect of setting the axis of rotation.

A common arrangment is to set VAWT with axis of rotation parallel with zenithal lines, like in WindSpire; most Darrieus machines are seen standing tall as we walk. However, they still work when cabled across terrain as Harry V. and Pierre B. and Doug S. have illustrated. Doug S.' new WIPO patent applicaton (different from the patent he mentioned a day or so ago) is full of horizontally setting the axis of elements that are VAWT elements. David H. Shepard had a patent on such AWECS with the axis of an airborne Darrieus element log-like device kited by a lifter airfoil. The Magenn current focus is on a VAWT with axis set horizontally, but axis not parallel to wind (their patent confuses terms---easy to do). Just how much the future might hold in niche applicatons "horizontally-set-axis-VAWT AWECS" (HSA-VAWT AWECS) is not seen clearly.

http://www.mariahpower.com/
shows the standard set of an H-Darrieus VAWT in a non-AWE device.

Patent number: 4659940 by  David H. Shepard
Filing date: Oct 11, 1985
Issue date: Apr 21, 1987
Power generation from high altitude winds
has the HSA-VAWT AWECS exampled.

An aerostat lifted HSA-VAWT AWECS is also instructed here:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=akF7AAAAEBAJ

Where might this HSA-VAWT AWECS direction fill an applicaton appropriately?

From the patent:  "Manuel Munoz Saiz. San Emilio 16. 1, 3, Madrid 20807 (ES)"


================= in concert, Moderator note:
High Harry,

At the page regarding Manuel Muñoz Saiz
http://www.patentsoffer.com/contact.php
I placed the following note:


We have published in our web and group about your patent Wind energy catchment device. One of our members is Harry Valentine, an active author. He wants to contact you for including items about your concepts. His e-mail is "Harry Valentine"
<mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Our notices on your patent so far:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/notices/2009dec.html

and

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AirborneWindEnergy/message/661

Please contact Harry Valentine.
And you are welcome to send updates and notes about the patent and interests in it.
Thank you,
Joe Faust
Airborne Wind Energy Industry Association

=====================30

At the page regarding Manuel Muñoz Saiz
http://www.patentsoffer.com/contact.php

Wow, maybe someone should be working on a system that can handle all the different types looping line schemes so the length and tension can be regulated for airbourne purposes. Then they would need to deal with the possibility of overpowering the generators so they don't fry. Someone really should work on that.
-brooks

I agree

Lynn

Hi Brooks,
 
The loop system can drive multiple generators . . . some of them generating power while others rotate without producing power. Additional generators may still idle and be driven up to engagement speed using small electric motors . . . the additional generator may be "clutched in" like shifting a manual gear system.
 
Harry

---

Another approach:
For thousands of years the power of the wind has been converted to mechanical energy by people around the globe using tethered devices flown up in the air: islanders, mainlanders, fishermen, festiva; flyers, praying parties, artists, spring celebrationists, and more. The conventional wind energy conversion device crossing borders and centuries...has been the use of kites, tethered danglies in the wind...
Arms and hands felt the tug of the mechanical energy. The conventional way to convert the wind's energy was via the kite. Other means of converting the wind's energy then can be considered alternative. It is just time to increase the conventional kiting use; bigger, more clever, stronger, etc., and use such conventional kiting with added cleverness to meet ever new needs. Let stand that the kite has been nearly universal, consistent, and very conventional. The wind energy converter --the kite-- is so deeply conventional that it worked its way to be a dime toy and nearly in the blood background of humanity. Then the kite gave us aviation. And now we just ask more of the same kite ... to give us tethered aviation and much more mechanical energy than before. No change of actor, just emphasis. There is no way my universe wil ever see kited wind energy as non-conventional or in any way take second place to the windmill towered just because recently an upsurge in their use has occurred. Keep counting the billions who have converted the wind's kinetic energy to exciting pullings of one's hand from the sky. Stand tall and be patient; the kite will deliver its conventional giving.
Of course, LTA and HTA kites move into history; both sectors have played, albeit the HTA kite has been most and longest used. Tethered wind power has had more participants hands-on than the hard-towered devices. Be proud of the deep conventional tethered means: kiting. Now just use that mechanical energy in engineered ways to fit new needs.

Sharing moderating of a healthy group as is AWE
can give good spice and fragrance to a growing group.
I will be stepping out of the moderatorship by the
end of December this month or sooner. I will click in
the moderatorship to one or a couple of strong applicants.
Let me know of your interst. My webmastering habits
has had me care for too many details. The new moderators
can let the reply tails ride as they have time, etc.

Let me know soon.
It has been great co-founding this group with DaveS.
It has been a privilege to work with DaveC in sharpening
the the moderation. Both of them and others will surely
remain consultants for challenges for the new moderator(s).

Lift and cheers for our year as a group ... we are 63 in count today.
JoeF

Before we leave the matter, let's check out two other factors in this matter:
The kite gave birth to the process that let the turbine blades evolve; the kite is the conventional foundation for all those Watts being generated by the towered turbines; so the kite should not take second place. Honor the kite for every Watt being generator by those three-blade towers! Next, notice that the leaves with tethered stems are kited at every waft and drawing benefits for the trees by the little kite leaves tethered by the stems. Earth would be poor without the tremendous amount of power conversion accomplished by those kiting leaves. The towered turbines are children of aviation; aviation is a child of the kite.

Is your AWECS business manager
shaking hands with opportunities
threaded throughout
http://www.eere.energy.gov/
and similar agents
in each nation?

Making proposals?

Keep medicines, foods, treasures, craft goods, etc.
cold via AWECS methods:

So far:
Refrigeration via AWECS:
1. Lift goods to cold-air altitudes.
2. Lift goods with water sack; let wind hit water sack for evaporative cooling of enclosed goods.
3. Make electricity to be used on ground to run a refrigerator.
4. http://www.physlink.com/education/AskExperts/ae670.cfm
5. ???

It looks to be employed as a happy symbol, while suggesting the real future to our eyes.  I've been noodling with the notion of using just that layout, using bamboo or wooden spars and polytarp for fabric for a farm-size unit.

Hey Dave S.
You have to apply a little sense of humor to these posts.
We gotta have some fun right?

OK, so I am thinking it is kind of funny that the main issue of wind turbine design is limiting power in high winds to prevent overspeed and consequent damage, while you already have "a conclusion that moderate L/D devices limit usefully" - as though by mere words on a screen you have solved any engineering challenge. I have to say: yes, I do think it's funny that you all think you've got this field sewn up; and yet, you have yet to encounter the main significant aspects of it such as maximizing L/D to limit system weight, and, of course, overspeed protection is the main thing - like your steering and brakes on your Indy car are important, like your brakes are really more important that even the engine, your overspeed protection scheme is more important than even how much power you make, since a turbine without overspeed protection will be blown to smithereens in the first good storm.

But I can't have that discussion here. Here, overspeed is not a problem. Nor is maximizing L/D a problem. Nor is high RPM to spin a generator. Power per unit cost: Nope. No regular wind energy topic has any place here, it seems. Especially discussions of power output I guess. I don't know, I just tried to look up Kitelab like you said; and I am not finding much. Univ of Delfts? Where Ockels resurrected my then-20-year-old teenage first-ever attempt at inventing a new windmill as the Laddermill?

The next point is that limited L/D devices have already been deemed to use up too much material (=weight) in the groundhugger turbine world, which is why they are only pursued by amateurs even without trying to make them fly. To take the folly of limited L/D devices into the air expecting superior performance would be the wrong direction to go in my opinion.

Anyway the reason I am sounding playfully challenging and throwing around intimations that nobody is making any power or has a working system or a power curve is that I am used to the other wind energy groups online, which tend to get very sarcastic and heated at times.
Sarcasm is the only way we get rid of the idiots who only talk about their hypothetical machines and never build them; or if they do build, they never use a generator or have any data. We gotta laugh at them after awhile. They all say the same things - it is such a worn pattern.

The people who make power answer the sarcasm with evidence of power output or something of the sort. My main point is that the field of wind energy is more involved than it sounds; and all the little questions the beginning inventors want to ignore are always the most pertinent questions, but the newbies cannot remain in their comfortable fantasy world if they acknowledge the real issues, so they repeat falsehoods based on their ignorance, never make any real power, and in the end never admit that their whole approach had no merit all along. They just go away and are replaced by the next one, usually the same basic "revolving door" wind turbine design with a new name. And now I see the same thing taken into the sky - many similar designs spooling kites in and out, or providing an upwind/downwind pulsating power path, like the revolving door turbines that are always cited as fitting on your roof and powering your whole home. Of course they never have to worry about overspeed protection either, just as your wheelbarrow doesn't need a racing suspension and brakes.

Most simply have a picture of a sheet metal unit with no generator. And they are making claims, denigrating real turbines, etc.

It is just good clean fun and keep people on their toes. It keeps people from being able to perpetually bullshit their way thru life that they are challenged. Verify a fact once in a while.

And also, I am kind of waiting for someone to post something like:
Hey Doug, don't you know that McConney has a "perpetual kite" operating that makes more power than it uses? On average: 2 kW? And you can see it here?

Or say that someone has a 500-foot high kite-spool-tether system that puts out 1000 watts continuous power in 30 mph winds? Even if it only operates for a few hours? I mean I know I missed everyones' talks but I just haven't heard of any operating systems that are putting out any useful amounts of power. That is the standard in wind energy.

Another thing that puzzles me sometimes is the instinctive retreat of questionable technology to fantasy "third world" applications - as though something that doesn't pencil out economically here will suddenly be economic deep in the heart of nowhere, where there is nothing to compare it to, and no way to repair it when it breaks.

But all in all, Dave S. you seem to just want to shoot down anything I say and never answer any question I ask about whether anyone is generating any power. You seem to imagine that mere words can ever substitute for working models.

What we like to say is: It is "A WInd Turbine" not "A Wish Turbine".
What it does in the wind is all that matters, not what we wish it would do.

What has now become a very old thing in wind energy is people saying they have "a better wind turbine" while ignoring the basics already learned in the field, and never producing any data to back up their generalized claims. I would love to see some impressive numbers of power output by a system. Do you have a link?
Doug S.

Over 40 pages. Wind is mentioned as a cleantech category. A photo of a 3-blade ground hugger. Then the fact that kite, kites, tether, altitude are not used even once. No hint yet that a game changer could be capturing the winds higher up by tethered WECS. Zero. The birth of AWECS is not yet noticed in large circles of hard core environmental workers. "AWECS" is a stranger who has yet to enter many key rooms. AWECS is barely breaching the os.
http://www.e2.org/ext/doc/NRDC2008AnnualReport-Full.pdf
Idea: Have your marketing team chair keep the NRDC informed of your progress.

JoeF

Sans a need of overspeed protection: EUAS-TWECS
How might such a system be designed?

Steps to practical solutions are invited in this post's thread.

If you had a kite carrying two counter-rotating wind turbines, you could fly it in figure eights during average wind, and keep it steady during gales, giving the turbines almost constant wind speed.

We have a new member: WisselKind.
Welcome.
Your online name urged me to share:

Where and when could perhaps TWECS save coal and oil or otherwise enhance quality of life by generating sound, lifting sound to be broadcasted from high points?

Start:
1. Bird scaring?
2. Training livestock?
3. Advertising?
4. Music for a city during a celebration?
5. Pulses to affect avalanche control?
6. Emergency signaling?
7. Artistic acoustic performance art?
8. School education novelty?
9. Talking to animal groups, herds, flocks?
10. ??????
11. ??????

Similarly, a kite moving at a constant velocity (as in a circular or "8" course) of, say 5X windspeed will experience only 6X windspeed during a 100% wind gust. The faster hour kite moves, the less gusts bother it (this is a veritablevcliche in land and ice sailing. Gusts which would destroy slower boats hardly faze the faster ones). Then again, "overspeed" relates to constant response to higher windspeed, not just gust protection.

Dave

(and a request to the moderator, please?  Please define your terms on a regular basis, both for new arrivals' sake and also for us "old" hands who've experienced a lifetime of "alphabet soup" changing on a weekly basis.  "Sans a need of overspeed protection: EUAS-TWECS..." unfortunately has no semantic content for many of us. Thanks!)

 

 

 

 

 

I think that overall, effort is reduced if posters simply spell out any acronym they have not seen spelled out within a day or so.  It is a few seconds of typing for one person, VS a minute of distraction for perhaps 30 readers.  If this seem tedious, there is a world of keyboard macros ready to keep it interesting and, eventually, fast. On this topic, I was able to reply, but still don't understand the acronyms.

News Release

South Africa Airborne Wind Energy Industry Association (AWEIA  ) rep team member for kite energy conversion systems (KECS ) and airborne wind energy (AWE)  attentions:

Christoff Muller    
Communicate with him via personal posts within the AWE group tool online to start a bridge with him.  

We have yet to answer his query publicly:   AWE Message 597

Other reps (volunteer positions) are posted as they occur in 
Locations

Christoff has been requested to copy notes also to Africa regional AWEIA rep JohnO on progress in any of the ten AWE scales.  One day Christoff will have company in his now team of one for South Africa.

Yes, TWECS  as a set of solutions is probably the best alternative for many purposes, not all.
The hard-towered turbines will be a winning alternative for niche applications.
The tethered turbines and tethered energy conversion systems (TWECS) will be best alternative for many applications.

Conventional wind power (CWP) is an alternative to be chosen when it wins for a need. It will be a good plenty of years before TWECS overtake CWP in energy production.

DaveL, I will join a group named AlternativeWindEnergy, if you form it.

Did  you vote on the poll yet?  One can vote there anonymously.
http://www.energykitesystems.net/polls/1industry.html
In the  notes section at the poll is the following clip that was altered from your suggestion; you may form others there, as you might: 

• Competitors for AWECS acronym, so far:
  
• Aerostat Wind Energy Conversion Systems     AWECS
• Aerial Wind Energy Conversion Systems         AWECS
• Airborne Wind Energy Conversion Systems    AWECS
• Alternative Wind Energy Conversion Systems  AWECS
• Aircraft Wind Energy Conversion Systems      AWECS
•  
• Competitors for AWE acronym, so far:
  
• Airborne Wind Energy       AWE
• Aerial Wind Energy        AWE
• Aerostat Wind Energy       AWE
• Alternative Wind Energy    AWE
• Aircraft Wind Energy        AWE

Welcome Christoff,
 
 
South Africa certainly has  great potential for airborne wind energy conversion as well as terrain assisted wind energy conversion with frequent and often powerful winds blowing off the south Atlantic Ocean and off the Indian Ocean. South Africa is also quite mountainous with lots of valleys and ravines where terrain assisted wind power technology may be installed.
 
There are deserts along the western coasts of South Africa and their northern neighbor, Namibia that also receives powerful winds off the Southern Atlantic. I can only assume that those coastal desert regions would be ideal locations to install offshore and shore-based kite-driven wind power technology.
 
 
Welcome,
 
Harry
 

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: AirborneWindEnergy-owner@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 21:02:06 +0000
Subject: [AWE] South Africa

 

Hi Doug, you speak of other wind energy groups online, would you consider sharing the links you know of? Lynn
---- dougselsam <doug@selsam.com

Alternative Wind Energy is all of us, and excludes tower wind turbines because they are the conventional. Lynn

The word "Alternative" has become so ubiquitous as to be ignored by the reader's eye. Also the word "Alternative" is already used to denote the broader set of wind, solar, etc.
We're talking about advancing the art of wind energy engineering, not some fluffy unsustainable lifestyle here.
It's not "alternative". Wind is already "alternative". It's better than merely "alternative". It's the next step of mainstream.

Would you call a jetliner "alternative" transportation? Especially if cars were already called that (in relation to a horse?)
I say stick with "high altitude".
Keep the High Ground
Play in The High Frontier
The High Frontier of Wind Energy
HFWE
High Frontier Wind Energy
also:
I predict that at least some working systems WILL include a tower as a starting point, as 300 feet of altitude is nothing to scoff at.
Again, to labor under the idea that everything learned in the past of wind energy has no place in advanced wind energy systems (AWES)is a serious mistake.
AWES
Advanced Wind Energy Systems
NGWES
Next generation Wind Energy Systems
IWES
Intergalactic Wind Energy Systems
SFWT
Stupid Flying Wind Turbines
WTAFOYH
Wind Turbines About to Fall on Your Head
:)
Doug Selsam

Apparently, my guess at the dating for the article was off.
In the article there is a phrase "In September 2009".
So, maybe Vestas' file on us is off some. With the the 2009 point, it becomes curious why the author did not have note of the approx. 40 AWE business entities ...they had just the four! Was the miss deliberate? I urge each AWE entity to send both e-mail and FAX to Vestas to let them know about your existence.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/small-wind-home/
http://www.scoraigwind.com/
http://www.otherpower.com
http://www.windstuffnow.com/
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndsu/klemen/index.htm

Maboomba
http://www.Maboomba.com

A spiral hydroelectric turbine inspired by Dan'l' & Doug's wind turbines-   ================================   Hello Rob and DaveS, spiral in water    http://www.energykitesystems.net/DaveSantos/spiraldc.mpg   Lift, JoeF