Comments on: Astounding EROEI of Kitegen Ready to Test!

By: Jenny Sommer

Jenny Sommer — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 13:28:00 +0000

There is probably a heap of data. They have built their first purpose made kite which is actually more a wing.
http://kitegen.com/2014/08/29/la-prima-power-wing/

Industrial production of the system is planned to start by 2016/17.

By: Jenny Sommer

Jenny Sommer — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 07:33:00 +0000

There are prototypes. Kitegen is building a bigger prototype for heights around 2000m at the moment. X-Wind is working on carousel machines.
Skysails just entered the power market. Their kites have towed cargo ships saving 30% of fuel for us the last 4-5 years.

My comment was aimed at Jacob who failed to understand the principles involved.

The kitegen carousel design is ready. The estimated cost for a 5GWe machine are 1.5b €.
Contact Massimo Ippolito if you want to buy one.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 00:01:00 +0000

Did someone find the key to the wayback machine? A two year old article and a four year old link?

What have kites done for us lately? Plenty of time to cobble together a prototype and crank out some data. Is there any?

By: Jenny Sommer

Jenny Sommer — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 22:17:00 +0000

Really?

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/7014#comment-729639

By: Jenny Sommer

Jenny Sommer — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 22:13:00 +0000

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/7014#comment-729639

Massimo Ippolito tells some numbers from the LCA.
1500 for the 10GW carousel.
350 for the Kitegen stem

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:14:00 +0000

It looks (from their website) that this is a number of kites attached to a rotating “carousel” .

Think of the carousel as being the hub and generator of a wind turbine. And the kites as being the blades.

Will the contraption work better (more efficiently/for less money) than other approaches to harness the wind? I guess we’re going to find out….

—

You’re system – the unwinding kite stream drum. I can see it working if the kite, once fully deployed, could be reduced in size thus allowing cable/kite retrieval using less energy than what was generated during deployment. Fly a big kite, reel in a little/collapsed kite.

That’s not to say that I would expect the system to be worthwhile.

—

My respect to your Sicilian grandmother….

By: Jacob Theodore

Jacob Theodore — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:46:00 +0000

Oh, PLEASE! So you have a kite with its cable wrapped around a drum on the ground? OK, so then you release the kite into the wind and it unrolls the cable from the drum, right? That drum rotation rotates a generator and produces electricity, right? So far, so good. So, when the kite reaches the end of its cable, and it stops, the drum stops, and the electricity is no longer generated. What do you do then? Release the kite, let it blow away and replace the empty drum with a full one with another kite attached, and start all over? Or do you turn the generator into a motor and haul the kite down? Oh, but that will need energy, won’t it? But you’ve just made electricity, so you use that energy (stored somewhere), to crank the kite back down. You then realize that it took more electricity to pull the kite down, than you produced, because you get maybe 80% efficiency on your motor/generator, and probably even less because of other easily identifiable system losses.

Why do I look at this as some form of mental/mechanical masturbation con-game? It’s because this kind of thing gets people worked up and produces two things: Nothing, and Less-than-nothing.

My Sicilian grandmother always said that that there were brilliant Italians and then there were those who went around in the southern Italian heat without hats and broiled their brains. She was mostly referring to my cousins and uncles. (The girls covered their heads outside, not just in church.) But about all my male relatives, in-laws and outlaws, you could sell any one of them a wheel, painted to look like a cheese, and they would eat it up.

By: First Look: Airborne Wind Turbine Prototype « Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:47:16 +0000

[…] Altaeros Energies, which calls its new blimp the Airborne Wind Turbine, is one of several companies working around the problem by sailing a turbine into the air (other attempts include hookups between wind turbines and kites). […]

By: Low Cost Wind Power with Airborne Wind Turbine Blimp from Altaeros

Low Cost Wind Power with Airborne Wind Turbine Blimp from Altaeros — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:23:15 +0000

By: Sandro kensan

Sandro kensan — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:32:26 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2wwWLFGneY

Stem video, kitegen early prototipe.

By: raimondo

raimondo — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:15:35 +0000

HI Susan
i’m a italian Kitegen fan since 2006.

If you like to report another killer-app from Italy i’d like suggest you to read this site:

http://www.biohyst.it/default.asp?lang=en&idPag=357

This tecnology use straw or other crop waste (not crop food like corn), with 100 kg of straw can produce 25 kg meal for animals and also 20 kg of lignin and also 26 liters of ethanol.

greetings

By: Sandro kensan

Sandro kensan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 14:45:26 +0000

http://www.aspoitalia.it/blog/nte/?s=kitegen

Here in italian there is the latest news about kitegen by Ugo Bardi and other. Please use google translation if you are not Italian tongue.

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:53:23 +0000

It is indeed…

By: Guillermo Mayorga

Guillermo Mayorga — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:52:49 +0000

Susan, thanks for bringing these news and the hope it creates.
I have been both happy and at the same time frustrated at the web site from Kitegen. Very good idea !! but they don’t keep it up to date so we know about the progress. It is mid november now … and I am chewing my nails wondering of there is good hope in the horizon from the latest tests. Looking forward to your news on about Kitegen.

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:10:19 +0000

We will know once the test is complete. But they estimate a 100 MW Carousel power plant is estimated to deliver energy for less than 0.03 Euro per kWh, cheaper than fossil fuels, which have the greatest energy return on energy invested now (that’s why we got so addicted to them!)

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:30:45 +0000

What is the EROEI?

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:45:16 +0000

It IS staggering, yeah. The results at the end of Novemember could be a great Christmas present to the world!

By: sol

sol — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 21:04:28 +0000

The capacity factor of the prototype KiteGen powerplant is ~57%. (5000 hours / year)

This is VERY HIGH for wind/solar power.

Also, I believe the power produced can be mostly scheduled since high altitude wind is not only much stronger than surface wind but also much more predictable and continuous.