5 ms·
I'm asking about the about the kite turbines. >I think the fairly simple answer is that you don't stack them or allow for any interference at all. If your kite
by cinquemb 11y ago
I'm asking about the about the kite turbines.
>I think the fairly simple answer is that you don't stack them or allow for any interference at all. If your kite goes up to 250m and has a 1km tether you space all your launchers on a 1km "radius" hexagonal grid. Your wind farm takes up more space but at first that's no problem at all. You could probably make it work at a 500m hexagonal grid but there's a small amount of risk associated there.
- jacquesm 11y agoWind is wind. Whether you're a kite or on the ground makes no difference. During a hurricane you want to be out of the way or there'll be pieces.
- cinquemb 11y agoSo if you had a tether strong enough to withstand the tensile force and able were to distribute the moments from the forces of where its tethered, you don't think that would work?
- jacquesm 11y agoNo, it would not work. The tensile force is going to go up so high that you'd have to overdesign it to the point of being impractical for normal use and even then it would have to be made out of un-obtanium. If you compute the forces in a hurricane acting on any appreciable surface area acting first on the internal structure of the kite (to transfer the force to the tether attachment point), then to the tether itself (and hurricane winds change direction and strength very rapidly) and finally from the tether to the ground station (with the edge in contact with a gimball (sp?) so the kite can rotate around the attachment point) you're looking at something that is no longer economically feasible or something so heavy that it will absorb a fair amount of the power generated just to stay aloft. Hurricanes will happily destroy structures many times stronger than this kite that are anchored in concrete, will blow 30 ton trucks over and in general are a menace. To harvest their power is akin to trying to set up an electrical plant that is exclusively powered by lightning or solar flares. Yes, there is power there, no, we have no practical way of harvesting that power, the best we can do is to try to either get out of the way or to shed it in a way that it does not do damage. The events are too rare, to unpredictable and too powerful to be practically harvestable.
- cinquemb 11y ago>Yes, there is power there, no, we have no practical way of harvesting that power, the best we can do is to try to either get out of the way or to shed it in a way that it does not do damage. So you sample for areas of a storm you can more predicatively than other places? >The events are too rare, to unpredictable and too powerful to be practically harvestable. But the distribution isn't uniform if you look at occurrence of where it happens on earth, some places are more likely to form storm systems vs others.
- jacquesm 11y agoMaybe a picture will help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEccgR0q-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEccgR0q-o Or maybe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3zMXJTbIrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3zMXJTbIrs Note that these machines are designed to the best of our present day abilities and that's nowhere near hurricane force winds. In the one case a brake was overrun, in the second the amount of power generated was enough to ignite the alternator. If storm is indicated for a region then you design your machines to be able to survive the storm, not to generate power during the storm. That's simply a function of how frequently it storms and how much power you can expect to generate extra if you were to design for the storm (hint: not much). > But the distribution isn't uniform if you look at occurrence of where it happens on earth, some places are more likely to form storm systems vs others. Yes, but still not frequently enough to design for it other than in 'survival' or 'shutdown' mode. And keep your fingers crossed that that is enough or you'll end up like those two above (or worse...). If all this really interests you you should check out fieldlines, it's an interesting forum, there is a ton of wind knowledge there, I used to be a pretty active member. greetings & thanks for the exchange.