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Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

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Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#81

Post by soperj »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #79
Scea91 wrote: post #61

Interestingly, the very first statement is quite misleading. The statement: > On average, a humble wind turbine uses less land area per megawatt-hour than almost any other power source. The article itself refers to this citation [1]. It says, unsurprisingly, that the most land efficient power source is nuclear. The statement is of course technically true because it says "almost any power source". With wind, however,…

I'm wondering if the OWID data takes the 3,400km^2 of exclusion zone from Fukushima and Chernobyl (more like 5,000km^2, see below) into account when calculating the average size of a nuclear plant? I think if we're saying the space beneath the blades can count towards aggregate wind-power land use, an argument can be made to include nuclear wasteland in the aggregate nuclear-power land use.

Chernobyl's exclusion zone is 4143km^2, and Fukushima's is 807km^2.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#82

Post by usrusr »

trefn wrote: post #76

I wonder if you could make the kite itself lighter than air to avoid issues where the wind dies down? E.g. a kite shaped airship.

There are no issues, at least as long as you can supply power to the base station: just make the motor/generator reel in the kite, that causes plenty of movement relative to the stationary air to keep it afloat and controllable right down to the reefing mechanism.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#83

Post by throwuwu »

NullPrefix wrote: post #65
IanCal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're under a crane lifting stuff up overhead on a work site, that's probably why.

but it's not a construction site though

Falling bolts and tools don’t really care if they’re on a construction site or not

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#86

Post by brazzy »

antisthenes wrote: post #37

So it's just a really big battery. The kite thing is just a novelty/marketing move. There have been containerized commercial battery systems available for at least a decade. The barrier to adoption is, as always, price, not "kite delivery". Is this for really remote places, like Greenland/Alaska? Because otherwise you can just use a truck/tractor.

You completely misunderstood. The kite is not for "delivery", it actually generates the power.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#87

Post by tamimio »

patall wrote: post #75
tamimio wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how they will deal with bird attacks. Falcons and eagles (ironically, they share the same name with this kite) are territorial and will go after these drones. I once had a huge heavy-lift drone that got attacked too. But with a pilot nearby, the easy solution is to fly to a higher altitude, that seems to determine who rules the sky in their eyes apparently. I’m not sure how this kite will manage such situati…

By being 60m2 big? I mean, helicopters are also not being attacked by eagles, why would this kite be?

Helicopters do get attacked, not so common because of several factors like the size, flight behavior, altitude, and most importantly the engine size and placement, these birds from my observation they usually attack from behind and/or above, both are properly “protected” in the helicopters, not so much in this kite, additionally, when the pilot is flying, they usually avoid it and continue their path, the birds mostly won’t chase and lose interest, but this kite is stationary and if the bird decided that it is hostile, it will keep trying to prey on it especially when you can’t increase the altitude substantially like a normal drone.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#88

Post by worik »

Scea91 wrote: post #61

Interestingly, the very first statement is quite misleading. The statement: > On average, a humble wind turbine uses less land area per megawatt-hour than almost any other power source. The article itself refers to this citation [1]. It says, unsurprisingly, that the most land efficient power source is nuclear. The statement is of course technically true because it says "almost any power source". With wind, however,…

> It says, unsurprisingly, that the most land efficient power source is nuclear

Not true if you factor in waste storage and the time to store it

Long after all the nuclear energy has been used making your toast, and long after many cycles of climate change, you will still be storing hi level nuclear waste, and monitoring it.

But who cares about tomorrow? Party on, and let future generations pay!

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#89

Post by londons_explore »

thechao wrote: post #73
londons_explore wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Google approach suffered from too much engineering . Specifically they had sunk too much money and too many people at very expensive prototypes before they'd gotten the design even close to running reliably. As soon as you become a big team, you become less nimble - which isn't what you need when your product still has big unknowns. They should have started with five 2 guy teams, a year and a budget of $5…

The back-of-the-envelope analysis for kite-based power is very compelling; enough that I tried my hand at designing a kite-powered system in ~2004. I don't think anyone can really appreciate how challenging the engineering (control systems) are for all-weather kite-flying until they just try to reel-in & reel-out a kite on a relatively calm day. I literally couldn't even write-down the differential equation which des…

Don't take the hard maths approach when you can take the lazy AI approach... Just fly a kite by hand, log the data, stick it through a reinforcement learning system to make you a controller that keeps the kite in the air.

Reinforcement learning loves these kind of problems that only have double digit numbers of scalar inputs and outputs.

Either way, my kite flying experience tells me that your reel-motors must move with quite some speed and power if you are to keep the kite in the air when the wind suddenly reverses direction.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#90

Post by kingkawn »

londons_explore wrote: post #69
Scea91 wrote: post #61

Interestingly, the very first statement is quite misleading. The statement: > On average, a humble wind turbine uses less land area per megawatt-hour than almost any other power source. The article itself refers to this citation [1]. It says, unsurprisingly, that the most land efficient power source is nuclear. The statement is of course technically true because it says "almost any power source". With wind, however,…

Wind turbines can be built big enough that the blades, at the lowest point, are higher than almost all other land uses, except perhaps forestry. To be honest, the access roads are probably the biggest real impediment to using the land around a wind turbine. Can't exactly farm millions of acres of corn with robotic combine harvesters with a criss-cross of access roads to the base of every turbine.

Why not? Seems easy to teach the robots to not harvest on the road
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