- What was said? What was not said?
- SS : single-skin
- MoF Museum of Flight
- BEV Breathrough Energy Ventures
- LCOE levelized cost of energy
- SeaTac is short for Seattle-Tacoma
- MTBCF mean time between critical failures Mean_time_between_failures
TUDelft's AWE R&D Blind Spot
Roland,
In your webinar you credit Loyd as the origin of theoretic AWE, while Loyd himself cites Pocock, who laid AWE out quite nicely 200 years ago; and Loyd credited Payne and McCutchen, in the '70s. Overlooking the true origins of Loyd's inspiration causes a heuristic blind spot in overlooking AWES architectures based on patent US3987987 Fig5, with superior crosswind load motion, inherent breakaway protection, less phase-loss, simpler control, and other critical advantages over single-anchor unit topology. In particular, topologically ordered lattices can be built from fig5, as the ultimate scaling strategy.
EU AWE R&D is headed into a wall by concentrating research into single-anchor reeling topologies. Wave after wave of PhDs is assigned to poorly patch this narrow down-select. You do not disclose your 2007 patent interest in your publications, and certainly cannot claim no competing interests in the narrow design focus. Non-response to persistent concerns is attributable to not having a rigorous basis for the architectural downselect. Not even the Valkenburg crash a paradigm pivot. You do not seem to realize that TUDelft AWE engineering science has been led astray by VC rush-to-market.
Past kPower direct discussions with Loyd and Ockels themselves supports this grim picture. When TUDelft/AWEurope AWE R&D decides to again explore broader AWES topologies, count on kPower collaboration. An AWEC2021SeaTac Event will broaden the R&D picture, better positioning us all for expanded R&D. Another EU AWEC is comparatively stagnation. Wubbo would long ago have steered TUDelft R&D back toward broad AWES topological exploration. Did he not share SpiderMill with you?
Wubbo Lives,
kPower
TUDelft's Risky-bet R&D Strategy debunked
Roland, here responding to particular residual webinar claims one-by-one, in a trickle...
Regarding the myth that it was necessary for TUDelft to down-select an AWES architecture subjectively, in order to hastily scale up, with massive funding, yet a professed lack of enough in-school researchers, as argued by Roland.
The proper alternative was to go ahead and test everything in parallel, at small scale, with fly-offs and matrix-scoring every step of the way. Even kPower at only a dozen or so direct developers, and barely 200k USD to date, has been able to test virtually every branch of AWES concept-space. kPower is therefore better able to reason over all players, predicting winners like SkySails, and losers like Makani.
Venture capitalists from Google on down have erred catastrophically in guessing which AWES architecture should scale up early, in order to meet false market assumptions. TUDelft abetted the VC rush in committing to narrow poorly-scalable poorly-reliable down-selection, rather than community-wide due-diligence in broad-based R&D. The capital expended proves-out R&D dead-ends, by the data, hidden or not. Its a new phase in AWE, by hard lessons.
AWEurope will only be further weakened by continuing in conceptual isolation and extending its conference monopoly strategy. No amount of further capital is enough to save misplaced architectural down-selects (single line topology, eVTOL, control-pods, com-links, rigid airframes, etc.). Even Skysails (not a TUDelft spin-off) needs to move away from single-line topology, to scale its North NZ wings to 1000m2 and interconnect them to GW unit-scale.
Sample AWES Paradigms missed on TUDelft and GoogleX Radar
- Persistent Flight with a Play Sail
- Airborne Transistor
- AWES Megascale-Fairlead Combo-COTS
- Coal-kite-Hybrid Schematic
- Expedition-electric-skateboard
- Expedition Electric-Skateboard-Prototype
- Fayette Reuse
- H bridle
- Dancing-Hippos Kite AWES
- Kite PTO
- Knot Tied by Kite
- Looper SLK Anchor
- Looper SLK Anchor Closeup
- Looper SLK-Rig
- Multi Tri-Tether
- Pilot-lifted Power Kite
- Kitesled Concept
- Staked-kite
- Tri-Junction Knot
- US3987987 Variants
- WindSled-AT
- Wind Sled Gen
Comments on your AWE Webinar, and the path forward
Dear Roland,
Your recent webinar is a fine public contribution to AWE. It matters not that the transmission quality was spotty, as its core ideas that count.
Regarding some of these ideas, it was interesting how you interpret US AWE compared to hidden US players like kPower. In our case, we always questioned Makani's high-complexity single-down-select as bad engineering science experimental design, and predicted they would fail, since 2009. KPS was a related major failure case. TUDelft instead embraced these players and no EU player seems to have predicted such failures (by specific failure mode analysis). It's not so much a US-EU contrast as a gap between high-complexity players and the many small cool KIS players, several of whom are emerging in EU, but not within AWEurope. The same pattern failure is predicted for all high complexity concepts that depend on complex control, com-links, single-tethers, low power-to-mass, and so on; for two or three decades to come, based on basic critical-path analysis.
A major conceptual AWES alternative has slowly emerged outside of your circle in the last five years; a mega-scale energy metamaterial paradigm with a many-connected-topology of many large simple kite units. The partial connection to your scope of research is Rod's article on Kite Networks in the 2nd book, but with rotary WECS units that cannot unit-scale like SS power kites. You seem never to guide students and peers into strongly exploring in the Kite Network direction, having committed to single-line AWES unit topology. You are stuck struggling with kites of ~100m2 at best, prone to breakaway, and dependent on inherent control complexity rather than inherent embodied stabilities. You therefore do not even identify the metamaterial AWES concept space in your fundamental classification.
This conceptual gulf has been driven by AWEC then AWEurope monopolization of conferences on the pretext that Makani was all there really was of US AWE, and they were happy with EU-only conferences, that its US critics were not bothering to attend. Now its down to WindLift, a Wing7 variant with limited prospects, and eWind, similarly struggling to deliver a workable product, after a few million dollars spent. For social and technical affinities, these players look to AWEurope as PR cover within a pack of similarly threatened down-selects that cannot scale nor survive deployment. Naturally, this is not how you present AWE to your students and peers.
By relentless positioning as the most influential EU researcher, you now have leadership power to decide how EU AWE R&D is to proceed for years to come. Your webinar suggests that you are determined to hold course with your topological down-select, hoping incremental refinement will achieve the required long MTBCF. You should instead be diversifying EU R&D and healing the breech that EU-centric venture capitalism has created.
You have only to endorse eWind organizing AWEC2021SeaTac, and help them make the deposit on Boeing's MoF as a conference venue and some sponsored planning costs (~7k*), and you will position AWEurope to share in BEV funding, only awaiting us to have a mid-cap (~300M) investment plan. Udo cannot make this call, as a non-engineer compromised by his investments, nor RichardR, betting so deeply on AP3 path, which is doomed to crash if flown. However, Udo and Ampyx could lead us in developing BEV AWE funding, to secure their own long-term success.
That's where your webinar vision puts you, deciding to continue EU R&D as you have, or make a radical course change. You did not feature the Valkenburg crash, nor have you done a Helios-quality Mishap Report, nor is there public data for the M600 crash, but this is where EU AWE is headed, a lot more crashing and no core solutions, if you do not change course. For its part, kPower is committed to small scale foundational development the AWE metamaterial paradigm, and hopes to present at a US conference.
Regarding your presentation of theoretic crosswind motion advantage; the engineering calculus changes radically if you account for highest power-to-mass and highest raw area of giant SS power kites, and these kites as metamaterial units. This is the performance basis for a serious comparative fly-off against high speed rigid wing AWES, as well as interrelated LCOE, engineering complexity, and safety/reliability issues.
Thanks again for the fine webinar and overview of major EU AWE R&D. Thanks for considering AWEurope support for AWEC2021SeaTac a win-win path for all AWE, especially worthy players facing collapse. The fine EU players will get red-carpet treatment.
Best,
Dave Santos
kPower
* Cost little eWind is not liquid enough to underwrite.