7 ms·

Ampyx Power: Wind energy systems using tethered wings above 200 meters

53 points by xdze2 6y ago

donquichotte 6y ago
I briefly worked for a competitor of Ampyx. I love the idea, but given that it took decades to scale traditional wind turbines which are much simpler by design to powers in the range of MW, I can't see this happening. These systems are insanely complex, you need tethers, winches, a drone that flies 24/7 and can safely and autonomously start and land in many weather conditions. It also looks like google gave up on Makani, which had airborne generators.
- steve76 6y ago
  Instead of landing, crash through a kinetic recovery system which charges a rail cannon. Launch a space plane into orbit for the charging of solar cells. Still crash them back into recovery. The space plane now is just a cannon ball or a cloud of ball shot. Make everything smaller to the scale of molecules.
- jillesvangurp 6y ago
  True, it needs some infrastructure. But on the other hand, this may be similarly complex/expensive as installing and maintaining a wind turbine on a tower that's 100m high is. These things tend to be pretty complicated and expensive as well. It's all about operational cost vs revenue in the end (and comparing that to other solutions). IMHO wind and solar are still making great leaps currently in cost effectiveness and efficiency. So you'd have to compete with/undercut that. Which is of course a challenge for just about any other form of energy generation currently (particularly anything nuclear of fossil fuel based). The added advantage of this setup would be that you can land the things during a storm or for maintenance which potentially simplifies e.g. in the field repairs. Also, if they can be small enough that they can be mounted on a truck, deployment might be quicker or you might be able to re-deploy them to other areas. Currently building a new wind mill park is a large investment. Mass production of these things might enable more rapid roll out. So there are some upsides theoretically. Safety might be a bigger issue. The cables would be a risk for planes and what happens if the cable snaps? Autonomous drones would be able to handle the latter probably (by crashing/landing in some safe spot). Also, lots of moving parts means those parts need more frequent maintenance/replacement. I imagine the stresses on the cable and mounts would be substantial (and proportional to the amount of power generated).
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    It is of an entirely different level of complexity.
timthorn 6y ago
Also in the same game, Kite: http://www.kitenergy.net/ http://www.kitenergy.net/
NohatCoder 6y ago
I wonder how closely these can be deployed? Safe operation might require large distances between base stations. If they can't beat conventional wind mills in power per area, that may be a deal breaker in many scenarios.
- anotheryou 6y ago
  You can put them in the water with just an anchored buoy.
  - NohatCoder 6y ago
    Then you have to connect them all with sea cables, those add up if you need another km for every base you install.
    - anotheryou 6y ago
      Yes, preferably not too deep water. Still better than trying to keep a windmill-like turbine upright (those exist, but look complicated https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/styles/general_full_column/public/uploads-wysiwig/2017-1-OffshoreWind-ph3-WB.jpg?itok=RVnBUJSH https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/st... ). edit: oh you mean for the electricity, yes...
- adrianN 6y ago
  I wonder how close to humans they can be deployed. I'd guess that thing can fly quite a distance before it comes crashing down in case anything breaks.
- lambdatronics 6y ago
  Depends on how good your control system is: https://youtu.be/Y_0LW0iaRfQ?t=43 https://youtu.be/Y_0LW0iaRfQ?t=43
carapace 6y ago
See also Magenn (I believe they're defunct now.) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=magenn https://duckduckgo.com/?q=magenn Their idea was to use inflatable Magnus effect generators to provide lift as well as power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect
anotheryou 6y ago
Have you seen these guys (makani)? Kiting in an figure-8 with turbines instead of propellers (actually used as propellers for liftoff). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA That thing is also huuuge: https://makanipower.com/makani/images/pages/technology/cta.jpg https://makanipower.com/makani/images/pages/technology/cta.j... longer vid with sound: https://youtu.be/hYxeni2vVOs?t=60 https://youtu.be/hYxeni2vVOs?t=60
- tekknolagi 6y ago
  Looks like Google is shutting down Makani: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/18/alphabet-takes-the-wind-out-of-its-makani-energy-kites/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/18/alphabet-takes-the-wind-ou...
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Another one that - forgive me the pun - failed to take off.
- starpilot 6y ago
  There are quite a few companies working on this: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/a-beginners-guide-to-the-airborne-wind-turbine-market https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/a-beginners-gui...
olau 6y ago
Cleantechnica had a writer who spent some time taking a closer look at the claims made by companies in this space, a couple of links: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/21/rip-google-makani-perhaps-the-entire-airborne-wind-energy-space-will-finally-disappear/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/21/rip-google-makani-perha... https://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/19/googles-makani-regulatory-technical-wildlife-challenges/ https://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/19/googles-makani-regulato...
- gypsy_boots 6y ago
  > The only press they ever received was from credulous buzztech sites that just wanted something flashy to grab eyeballs, so they weren’t used to anyone actually being engaged enough intellectually to point out the lack of clothes that they were wearing. I love the way this is written.
tlb 6y ago
It looks like a lot of the cost and complexity is to allow takeoff and landing. Is anyone working on a system where the flying part never lands? You presumably have to supply some energy to keep it aloft on windless days, but that might be cheaper than landing gear.
- adrianN 6y ago
  It would need maintenance eventually.
rwallace 6y ago
I think I am missing something here, because I don't quite get how the wind does continual work on the device to generate power. I mean, at the start the device goes downwind unreeling a tether, so it is pulling on the tether and doing work, so far so good. Then it reaches the maximum extent and... starts more or less staying where it is, staying aloft? Okay. But it's not systematically moving, so no longer doing work. What am I missing?
- mbreese 6y ago
  I don't know anymore than what was on their site, but my reading of it was that it works by moving the airframe (plane? glider?) around in the wind-stream. The tether would then be continuously moving back and forth (or in and out). I think this the meaning behind the figure-eight pattern they show. If it's anything like some ocean wave generators, it might be able to generate power when moving in either direction, but I'm not sure about that.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  Imagine for a moment that you built a wind turbine generator with just one blade. Instead of two other blades, you just had a counterweight. Then replace the tower and hub with a tether, and drop the counterweight. That's effectively what these technologies are doing. In point of fact, all of the blades on a commercial wind turbine are shaped like wings, such that the reaction force of the air flowing over the wing acts to drive the wing in the direction of motion and adds a drag force away from the tether. In the classical tower arrangement, you extract energy by opposing the rotation of the blade about the tower. In the energy kite arrangement, you extract energy by running the "propellors" in reverse as generators to oppose the forward thrust.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Single blade turbines approach the maximum possible under Betz' law regarding power extraction from a moving air mass but suffer from resonance and material fatigue to the point that it offsets all advantages. Twin blade rotors suffer from thump and material fatigue as well, three seems to be the optimum and is what almost all commercially available turbines use. Kites are a complication that nobody needs.
benkarst 6y ago
It must be hard to get an MVP. It's been 10 years and they only have renderings?
- jacquesm 6y ago
  You don't need an MVP to raise money. This is a polite way of saying that most of these are bordeline scams, they could work in theory and if the people behind them have done their homework they know full well they will never see them in large scale deployment but it is a nice way to get a bunch of cash to play around with and tinker. See also: flying cars, especially Moller.
jacquesm 6y ago
Every couple of years someone will jump out of nowhere and claim the wind energy sector has it all wrong, the list is very long. Windtree, Makani and many many others that replace simple and sturdy as well as well understood mechanisms with highly variable and fragile ones, usually without having studied the corpses of those that came before and died on the hill of unnecessary complexity. The closest that ever came to realization was the Darrieus rotor project in Canada, that consumed a ton of resources and resulted in the Aeolian (Eole?), a huge (100m, I've seen it up close before they tore it down, most impressive) VAT that ended up running for a couple of hours before its lower main bearing gave up the ghost under the vibrations. http://www.wind-works.org/cms/typo3temp/pics/EoleCapChat045x7_02_6bf4ee5a45.jpg http://www.wind-works.org/cms/typo3temp/pics/EoleCapChat045x... Wind turbines are hard, and the standard shape that we've settled on was not due to a lack of creative ideas but simply because it is by far the simplest and most robust shape that gets the job done. Any company pitching some complex alternative should at a minimum mention in their deck the degree to which they have researched the failures in the field of predecessors and what will set them apart.
andrewflnr 6y ago
I have a goofy idea: kite power to replace portable solar panels and generators rather than for the grid. Something small scale you can take in your car (backpack would be even cooler) to get a few watts to charge your phone. Would this ever work to, say, to the extent of having better power to weight than solar?
yummypaint 6y ago
Why do these companies seem to fixate on fixed wing aircraft? Why not use a big parachute style kite similar to what paragliders use? You could send control signals to collapse the wing when the end of the spool is reached, making it eay to reel in and/or direct it upward out of the powerband. Then let it expand back to full size to repeat. The cost, weight, and complexity would seemingly be much lower. I would argue the surface area of a parachute can be scaled up more easily than the wing area of a plane.
- lambdatronics 6y ago
  Less to go wrong -- foil kites can become tangled in their bridle lines due to fluctuating wind which lead to a stall. Tangled lines can prevent the safety release mechanism from depowering the kite: https://youtu.be/pU0mEWKf-_Q?t=15 https://youtu.be/pU0mEWKf-_Q?t=15
aaron695 6y ago
I there a good argument it's not profitable, but this should be seen like going to the moon. I personally don't can about 'alternative' energy, but a lot of people do, and getting tech that permanently runs hundreds of meters of even kilometres in the atmosphere will open up a lot of possibilities. We need to stop thinking of the Earth in 2D and these projects help. For once lets use the fact people want to invest in 'alternative' energy on something exciting. There is are so many theoretical things you can do with platforms kilometres in the air.

53 points by xdze2 6y ago

I briefly worked for a competitor of Ampyx. I love the idea, but given that it took decades to scale traditional wind turbines which are much simpler by design to powers in the range of MW, I can't see this happening. These systems are insanely complex, you need tethers, winches, a drone that flies 24/7 and can safely and autonomously start and land in many weather conditions. It also looks like google gave up on Makani, which had airborne generators.

steve76 6y ago
Instead of landing, crash through a kinetic recovery system which charges a rail cannon. Launch a space plane into orbit for the charging of solar cells. Still crash them back into recovery. The space plane now is just a cannon ball or a cloud of ball shot. Make everything smaller to the scale of molecules.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
True, it needs some infrastructure. But on the other hand, this may be similarly complex/expensive as installing and maintaining a wind turbine on a tower that's 100m high is. These things tend to be pretty complicated and expensive as well. It's all about operational cost vs revenue in the end (and comparing that to other solutions). IMHO wind and solar are still making great leaps currently in cost effectiveness and efficiency. So you'd have to compete with/undercut that. Which is of course a challenge for just about any other form of energy generation currently (particularly anything nuclear of fossil fuel based). The added advantage of this setup would be that you can land the things during a storm or for maintenance which potentially simplifies e.g. in the field repairs. Also, if they can be small enough that they can be mounted on a truck, deployment might be quicker or you might be able to re-deploy them to other areas. Currently building a new wind mill park is a large investment. Mass production of these things might enable more rapid roll out. So there are some upsides theoretically. Safety might be a bigger issue. The cables would be a risk for planes and what happens if the cable snaps? Autonomous drones would be able to handle the latter probably (by crashing/landing in some safe spot). Also, lots of moving parts means those parts need more frequent maintenance/replacement. I imagine the stresses on the cable and mounts would be substantial (and proportional to the amount of power generated).
- jacquesm 6y ago
  It is of an entirely different level of complexity.

timthorn 6y ago

Also in the same game, Kite: http://www.kitenergy.net/ http://www.kitenergy.net/

NohatCoder 6y ago

I wonder how closely these can be deployed? Safe operation might require large distances between base stations. If they can't beat conventional wind mills in power per area, that may be a deal breaker in many scenarios.

anotheryou 6y ago
You can put them in the water with just an anchored buoy.
- NohatCoder 6y ago
  Then you have to connect them all with sea cables, those add up if you need another km for every base you install.
  - anotheryou 6y ago
    Yes, preferably not too deep water. Still better than trying to keep a windmill-like turbine upright (those exist, but look complicated https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/styles/general_full_column/public/uploads-wysiwig/2017-1-OffshoreWind-ph3-WB.jpg?itok=RVnBUJSH https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/st... ). edit: oh you mean for the electricity, yes...
adrianN 6y ago
I wonder how close to humans they can be deployed. I'd guess that thing can fly quite a distance before it comes crashing down in case anything breaks.
lambdatronics 6y ago
Depends on how good your control system is: https://youtu.be/Y_0LW0iaRfQ?t=43 https://youtu.be/Y_0LW0iaRfQ?t=43

carapace 6y ago

See also Magenn (I believe they're defunct now.) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=magenn https://duckduckgo.com/?q=magenn Their idea was to use inflatable Magnus effect generators to provide lift as well as power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect

anotheryou 6y ago

Have you seen these guys (makani)? Kiting in an figure-8 with turbines instead of propellers (actually used as propellers for liftoff). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA That thing is also huuuge: https://makanipower.com/makani/images/pages/technology/cta.jpg https://makanipower.com/makani/images/pages/technology/cta.j... longer vid with sound: https://youtu.be/hYxeni2vVOs?t=60 https://youtu.be/hYxeni2vVOs?t=60

tekknolagi 6y ago
Looks like Google is shutting down Makani: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/18/alphabet-takes-the-wind-out-of-its-makani-energy-kites/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/18/alphabet-takes-the-wind-ou...
jacquesm 6y ago
Another one that - forgive me the pun - failed to take off.
starpilot 6y ago
There are quite a few companies working on this: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/a-beginners-guide-to-the-airborne-wind-turbine-market https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/a-beginners-gui...

olau 6y ago

Cleantechnica had a writer who spent some time taking a closer look at the claims made by companies in this space, a couple of links: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/21/rip-google-makani-perhaps-the-entire-airborne-wind-energy-space-will-finally-disappear/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/21/rip-google-makani-perha... https://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/19/googles-makani-regulatory-technical-wildlife-challenges/ https://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/19/googles-makani-regulato...

gypsy_boots 6y ago
> The only press they ever received was from credulous buzztech sites that just wanted something flashy to grab eyeballs, so they weren’t used to anyone actually being engaged enough intellectually to point out the lack of clothes that they were wearing. I love the way this is written.

tlb 6y ago

It looks like a lot of the cost and complexity is to allow takeoff and landing. Is anyone working on a system where the flying part never lands? You presumably have to supply some energy to keep it aloft on windless days, but that might be cheaper than landing gear.

adrianN 6y ago
It would need maintenance eventually.

rwallace 6y ago

I think I am missing something here, because I don't quite get how the wind does continual work on the device to generate power. I mean, at the start the device goes downwind unreeling a tether, so it is pulling on the tether and doing work, so far so good. Then it reaches the maximum extent and... starts more or less staying where it is, staying aloft? Okay. But it's not systematically moving, so no longer doing work. What am I missing?

mbreese 6y ago
I don't know anymore than what was on their site, but my reading of it was that it works by moving the airframe (plane? glider?) around in the wind-stream. The tether would then be continuously moving back and forth (or in and out). I think this the meaning behind the figure-eight pattern they show. If it's anything like some ocean wave generators, it might be able to generate power when moving in either direction, but I'm not sure about that.
brandmeyer 6y ago
Imagine for a moment that you built a wind turbine generator with just one blade. Instead of two other blades, you just had a counterweight. Then replace the tower and hub with a tether, and drop the counterweight. That's effectively what these technologies are doing. In point of fact, all of the blades on a commercial wind turbine are shaped like wings, such that the reaction force of the air flowing over the wing acts to drive the wing in the direction of motion and adds a drag force away from the tether. In the classical tower arrangement, you extract energy by opposing the rotation of the blade about the tower. In the energy kite arrangement, you extract energy by running the "propellors" in reverse as generators to oppose the forward thrust.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Single blade turbines approach the maximum possible under Betz' law regarding power extraction from a moving air mass but suffer from resonance and material fatigue to the point that it offsets all advantages. Twin blade rotors suffer from thump and material fatigue as well, three seems to be the optimum and is what almost all commercially available turbines use. Kites are a complication that nobody needs.

benkarst 6y ago

It must be hard to get an MVP. It's been 10 years and they only have renderings?

jacquesm 6y ago
You don't need an MVP to raise money. This is a polite way of saying that most of these are bordeline scams, they could work in theory and if the people behind them have done their homework they know full well they will never see them in large scale deployment but it is a nice way to get a bunch of cash to play around with and tinker. See also: flying cars, especially Moller.

jacquesm 6y ago

Every couple of years someone will jump out of nowhere and claim the wind energy sector has it all wrong, the list is very long. Windtree, Makani and many many others that replace simple and sturdy as well as well understood mechanisms with highly variable and fragile ones, usually without having studied the corpses of those that came before and died on the hill of unnecessary complexity. The closest that ever came to realization was the Darrieus rotor project in Canada, that consumed a ton of resources and resulted in the Aeolian (Eole?), a huge (100m, I've seen it up close before they tore it down, most impressive) VAT that ended up running for a couple of hours before its lower main bearing gave up the ghost under the vibrations. http://www.wind-works.org/cms/typo3temp/pics/EoleCapChat045x7_02_6bf4ee5a45.jpg http://www.wind-works.org/cms/typo3temp/pics/EoleCapChat045x... Wind turbines are hard, and the standard shape that we've settled on was not due to a lack of creative ideas but simply because it is by far the simplest and most robust shape that gets the job done. Any company pitching some complex alternative should at a minimum mention in their deck the degree to which they have researched the failures in the field of predecessors and what will set them apart.

andrewflnr 6y ago

I have a goofy idea: kite power to replace portable solar panels and generators rather than for the grid. Something small scale you can take in your car (backpack would be even cooler) to get a few watts to charge your phone. Would this ever work to, say, to the extent of having better power to weight than solar?

yummypaint 6y ago

Why do these companies seem to fixate on fixed wing aircraft? Why not use a big parachute style kite similar to what paragliders use? You could send control signals to collapse the wing when the end of the spool is reached, making it eay to reel in and/or direct it upward out of the powerband. Then let it expand back to full size to repeat. The cost, weight, and complexity would seemingly be much lower. I would argue the surface area of a parachute can be scaled up more easily than the wing area of a plane.

lambdatronics 6y ago
Less to go wrong -- foil kites can become tangled in their bridle lines due to fluctuating wind which lead to a stall. Tangled lines can prevent the safety release mechanism from depowering the kite: https://youtu.be/pU0mEWKf-_Q?t=15 https://youtu.be/pU0mEWKf-_Q?t=15

aaron695 6y ago

I there a good argument it's not profitable, but this should be seen like going to the moon. I personally don't can about 'alternative' energy, but a lot of people do, and getting tech that permanently runs hundreds of meters of even kilometres in the atmosphere will open up a lot of possibilities. We need to stop thinking of the Earth in 2D and these projects help. For once lets use the fact people want to invest in 'alternative' energy on something exciting. There is are so many theoretical things you can do with platforms kilometres in the air.