WindPower

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I was driving along one day and............

I have been thinking about some wind power options since my hill country home/shop gets a lot of it I figure it's worth a try. I want to make some large foam/composite blades using the JumboMachineTool and I already have a bunch of car alternators but many in the WP world are looking at kite for tapping into the upper level winds that flow more freely with less turbulance and higher speeds than the wind near the ground. Those big towers that the standard wind mills perch on are very expencive to build and the wind near the ground in nowhere near as effective as an unrestrictive flow. The main problems with kite power is launching and controlling the kite with big turbines hanging off them and once you get it up there and producing power, how do you get that power back down to earth without heavy electical cables? Some of us think we have the answers but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding....or putting one up there and making it work.

One of my goals is to make some sort alt energy charging system for one of my other projects; the ElectricCars

Many in the field are trying several different ideas involving endless loop systems where different types of parachutes or wings are attached to an endless loop and some sort of element causes drag on one side of the loop and less drag on the other but winding and unwinding an endless loop can be problematic. Here is a solution I came up with. The actual wind effected loop is not shown here but only connected to this loop via another pulley. This device deals with the large quantity of line required to get the working segments up to altitude.

As the main spool (gold elements) rotates, the conveyor belts, which are geared to the main shaft, travel about 1/2 inch (the line diameter)to keep the spooled line centered and cancel out the tendency for it to wind off the ends because of the spiral winding and unwinding. To pay out line (in blue), the winder/dewinder swing arm assembly (green elements) rotates counter clockwise (from pictured view). Reverse to take up line. Line in routed through a hollow shaft with outer roller support bearings and line will require swivel bearings at 20 foot intervals to avoid twisting when pay out and take in activation. Generator (in red) is linked by roller chain to main spool assembly. A spool diameter of 10 feet and a length of 20 feet should store over 12,000 feet of 1/2 inch line(actually not round, just points on the conveyor belts. 4 are pictured but 6 or 8 would be better). This should give the system the capability to reach several thousand feet of altitude.

This design is intended to be operational while winding or unwinding and at any altitude. Depending on the speed of the wind driven rotation, the unwinding operation may require some breaking of the main spool so that the swing arm can keep up...ie if both are rotating in the same direction at the same speed no line would actually be payed out. This design also makes it possible to operate at any altitude. Note that the blue "line" in the lower right hand side of the picture is the pulling element and the take up side(blue line at far left) is routed through a hollow shaft on the left side and through a series of pulleys out to the "swing arm assembly" and back to the "main spool". The "swing arm assembly" has a pulley mounted on a track that is servo or gear driven so that as the swing arm(green element) winds or unwinds it keeps the line properly placed so as to avoid overlapping or leaving gaps much as a fishing reel does. I will add some of the detail views soon to show how each part functions.

Here are some links and communications from some of the folks on Airborne Wind Energy group mailing list:

Here is one of the more developed home sized turbine based wind energy systems.

Doug Selsam Selsam Innovations / Superturbine Inc. / USWINDLABS 2600 Porter Ave. Unit B Fullerton, CA 92833 714-992-5594 http://www.SELSAM.com Doug@Selsam.com http://www.USWINDLABS.com

Here is the link to the High Altitude Wind Power wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Altitude_Wind_Power

Subject: EnergyKiteSystems.net .... February 2009 Date: Feb 1, 2009 6:07 PM Lift to all 55 in the AWEsome circle. There are several open new tools at http://www.EnergyKiteSystems.net

Add to the space as you wish.

Capturing the energy .... Forward the note to those working in kite energy.

Joe Faust

Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] kite power stuff Date: Jan 29, 2009 1:27 AM The Windbelt folks have formed a company and are trying to develop and market their devices. On the Education section of their website is a link to part and instructions for making one if anyone's interested: http://www.humdingerwind.com/index.php#/education/

> > http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4224763.html?series=37 > > power minus the spin > http://www.symscape.com/blog/wind-belt-wind-power-minus-the-spin > > That very interesting article had a link mentioning "flying versions" of windbelts. And a few scant details of what Makani Power is up to. > http://www.symscape.com/blog/flying-wind-turbines-blog-action-day > > search keywords: wind belt inventor > > http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0S00MtMaXtJHlMBNfz7w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBlazNvOWJmBHNlYwN0YWJzBHZ0aWQD?ei=UTF-8&p=wind%20belt%20inventor&n=21&js=1&tnr=20&fr2=tab-video&fr=yfp-t-118 > > There is an aeronautical engineer in Seattle that was trained at Michigan State with a really fast inflatble kite and while I was trying to find him again, I found this article. > > http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2001/1007/cover.html > > I was thinking of Dan Ruuska of Seattle Air Gear. His designs are awesome. From the pictures it look like Dan and Sue retired someplace warm! Does anyone have contact e-mail for them? > > http://web.archive.org/web/20080204223940/http://www.seattleairgear.com/ > > http://web.archive.org/web/20080205070744/www.seattleairgear.com/seattle.htm > > Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace. ~Robert Hutchings Goddard > > > The greatest obstacle to progress in science is the illusion of knowledge, the illusion that we know what's going on when we really don't. ~Prof. Mike Disney > > > "Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science-- so, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction." > ~ Ray Bradbury

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