Airborne Wind Turbines: The Future of Clean Energy?
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- Опубліковано 13 жов 2024
- Thanks to SurfShark for making this video possible. Go to surfshark.com/... an extra 4 months Surfshark.
Airborne wind energy has been catching my intertest for a few years now, and I thought it was time I looked into it a bit deeper. This video covers a number of developments in the space, including kites, balloons, and drones. A number of great companies have tried and failed, so will it every come to fruition?
Useful resources:
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• Will Airborne Wind Rep...
Credits:
Producer: Ryan Hughes
Research: Sian Buckley and Ryan Hughes
Video Editing and Sound Design: @aniokukade
Thumbnail: @luvkilomedia
Do you think airborne wind will take off? Thanks to SurfShark for making this video possible. Go to surfshark.com/ziroth for an extra 4 months Surfshark.
I've always found the ground-generating wind sails appealing, because they basically do what birds have evolved to master. I am not a physicist, but it seems that birds, by adjusting the angle of attack, are able to go up and down, without adding much energy.
It's just so dumb
How do the braindead like this twit, ever get their hands on a computer?
Does this fool actually have a living brain cell?
I'm Ryan Innes and I'm in this with you
The German Engineer joke: "that's all fine and good in practice... but how does it work in theory?!?" 😂😂😂
about the birds reduce the cat population by 0.1 % and it will avoid less bird losses then all wind based energy systems currently available
Exactly, car strikes, cats/ foxes etc are way more dangerous
People need to stop letting cats free roam
@@ConstantChaos1 cats are an invasive species change my mind.
Don't you mean more?
most studies on cats and bird populations are bad science making inane extrapolations (as you have done here). people draw the conclusions they want, and make the data fit their bias.
Congratulations on handing in your thesis! Writing these can be intense and I hope you're happy with the outcome!
Thank you, it was pretty all consuming at the end, but proud of what I achieved! I'll definitely make a video about it after the viva.
Since there is no one on board they should use hydrogen for lift. It’s cheaper, renewable and more buoyant.
Yeah and it may catch fire also !!
@@عبدالمجيدععع-ش1ظ Possibly not that big a problem. The things are airborne - if it goes bang at altitude, not a huge problem. You just need to fit it with a self-destruct system which will rupture the envelope if it falls below a minimum safe altitude.
Wonder if natural gas or ammonia might work.
@@vylbird8014 A couple pressurized blow out valves or a plasma field to cause an implosion instead of an explosion.
@@tbuyus8328 No, too heavy. There aren't many gasses that are significently lighter than air. This is why we use the expensive and finite helium or the somewhat explodey hydrogen: There's nothing else that works.
Congratulations on submitting your Ph.D. thesis! I know what a relief it is to get to that point and past the, "I'm never going to finish this" stage.
The bird safety issue with static wind turbines is rather over stated (often by those who advocate for continued fossil fuel burning). The estimate for wind turbine bird deaths in the USA, with 150GW of installed wind capacity, or 9.8% of the country's total power generation, is between 681,000 and 1.4 million. Not small, but compared to the estimated 1 billion birds killed by buildings and the 1.3 to 4 billion killed by cats (again, just in the USA), the number pales in to insignificance. I'd be the first to advocate for action to reduce those wind turbine deaths (for example, painting one blade of a turbine black, to increase visibility, can reduce bird fatalities by more than 70%), but it's really a distraction. If the USA generated ALL of its power using wind turbines and took no action to increase bird safety, it would be responsible for at most 0.6% of the bird deaths in the country. I'm also ignoring that fossil fuel burning is estimated to kill 24 million birds per year.
I'm pretty sure it's because helium is impossible to contain, so it's requiring bouyancy to keep it flying was the issue. there's no way you can keep the helium from escaping. It'll literally leak out of a solid metal pressure vessel though the metal walls.
Like someone else commented. Hydrogen is the way to go. Not helium. Helium is basically a finite resource. We should save it.
@@dianapennepacker6854 That's exactly what they said about the Hindenburg.
@@Critical-Thinker895Thermite.
The Hindenburg was massive and carried people, along with running ICE engines. A balloon igniting at altitude isn't as big of a deal and is less likely with this application.
@@nomms tell that to the forest below... and in a windy day...
On the Aerostats. I used to work with them a bit and we eventually stopped using them because the price of helium had gone up so much it just wasn't profitable for our application anymore. I bet that had a part to play in the ones you mentioned.
As well as taking a 4 man crew to launch and dock it, someone had to monitor it at all times because it wasn't rated to fly in high wind speeds.
Scary as hell landing one when its windy!
Why not use hydrogen?
@@christophvonwaldhuf Google 'Hindenburg'😬
@@christophvonwaldhuf Google 'Hindenburg'😬
@@christophvonwaldhuf - hard to contain (diffuses through most lightweight materials), is a green house effect multiplier, only offers 8% higher lifting capacity than helium, requires extensive safety measures to prevent/surpress ignition, and hydrogen is energy intensive to generate.
I suppose a hot air balloon solution isn't viable? Like an electric heater within using some of the energy generated to operate.
Having different colored and designed kites could make it a nice tourist attraction too. If our energy production can also be an art installation we can inspire people with a more creative side to get into energy production.
That could be a good marketing point also, they could be made the same color as a company's color.
Modern kite designs are efficient and capture powerful, smooth air from higher altitudes. Launching and tweaking the kite's figure 8's optimally requires visual and hand sense, plus a sense of what the wind is doing. Wind velocity and direction changes, so different kite sizes are used in kitesurfing for optimal performance. Errant gusts would be tough for computers to deal with IMHO but they are less common once a few meters above the water.
One needs a big radius to cover all the wind directions and protect from kites crashing to the ground. The kite and cables wear out from variable tension, vibrations, salt, silt, UV light, pollution, etc.
Congratulations on starting your PHD!
Your channel produces great content - you're going to do great!!
Thank you, exciting times ahead!
Oh the quality improved drastically in this video - cheeky from u Ryan
I came up with this idea independently in the late 1980s. I had 2 designs. One was like that airplane and flew figure 8s. The other also generated the energy in the air, but was more like a helicopter with counter rotating blades.
When you covered wind kites that produce electricity, the natural next thing would be to cover Minesto tidal kites that produce electricity cost effectively because of them beeng very lite and small (12m, 28 tonnes, 1,2MW) and able to operate in slow currents which other tidal turbines can't.
Didn't this pop up in Big Hero 6?
Sure did! Came here to make the same comment. 👍
Congrats on the Phd thesis submission ... whew! Weight of the shoulders for sure!
Regarding this video, airborne wind turbines seem like an exercise in frustration for its developers though I wish them well. That said, I wonder if wave or tidal energy systems might be a quicker path to more reliable/economical electricity generation. Thanks for covering this topic and thanks for the wind turbines in your background shot. Nice touch! lol
Thank you, I'm excited top get out 'in the wild' more often! I have a few tidal projects I want to cover soon too, I think it's an awesome sector.
I see these as an amazing solution for.
1) Military.
2) Survival/Remote places.
3) Emeregency workers after a disaster.
Being able to produce energy for cheaper in some remote location seems great. Lots of barren places on earth with free sky above!
For infrastructure purposes? I sort of doubt it unless these get incredibly big, or fly higher. I mean the whole advantage is to take advantage of high altitude winds right? Yet none of em seem to do it. Nor do generators of any sort seem to be able to handle those high turbulent winds!
So even if they could get higher. Could they actually take advantage of it? Dunno.
Tidal also has a long way to go. The issue there is simply the cost of installing then more importantly maintaining. The ocean is brutal on equipment.
Now that pervoskites and batteries are coming online. Going to be tough for some of the other technologies to get cheap enough to compete.
I do hope millimeter wave drilling takes off along with those enclosed loop systems so we aren't spreading toxic shyte already in the ground into the water table.
@@dianapennepacker6854 Yeah.. I get that (I'm certainly not a subject matter expert lol). Whereas for more 'mainstream' alternative energy I was curious about tidal/wave energy other, etc., airborne wind seems it may pose as a solution for very unique remote solutions.
Congratulations making your thesis submission! All the best!
Really interesting. Thank you, Ryan!
Congrats on your phd thesis submission. Good luck.
Some variants have been proven well enough for over a decade even (some of the flying wing or gyrocopters work quite well and are reliable enough to implement), but the main issue is bureaucratic and regulatory. Basically it's hard to get an airspace restriction put in place that isn't temporary due to the flight hazard such systems would pose to any aircraft.
Congratulations with submitting your thesis!🎉 Great video! As you point out at the end, many things were deemed impossible, turned out to be possible, and in this case these companies have already proven that the principle is feasible. I would see these as another piece in the puzzle.
The "O" flying air craft is the most-reasonable situation as the wings fly the craft, while the fan inside the turbine, like an aircraft jet turbine, is able to spin at enormous wind velocities (at higher elevations).
That rather restricts the swept area which is bad.
@@rogerphelps9939 Many of the other tethered airfoil wing designs with the scaffolded wind turbine below the wings is not proper, and removes the aerodynamic lift under the wing of the craft itself.
These airborne systems appear to have rather small swept areas when compared with big ground based turbines. In order to compensate for lack of area you need a much greater wind speed. fortunately a doubling of wind speed compensates for a factor of 8 reduction in the swept area so the maths might actually be in favour of large aerial systems.
The regulatory challanges (whatever they may be in detail) are obviously orders os magnitude smaller than with wind turbines in the ground. In Germany there are few locations left where you could (legally) put up a wind turbine because house owners do not want them in their vicinity. Then there is the problem that they kill a lot of birds. So if there are rare, protected birds in an area, that's the end of all plans to put a wind turbine on the ground there. Both problems disappear with airborne wind energy. The next problem is that the good locations (a lot of strong wind) were used first, obviously. So each new (not: replacement) wind turbine is worse than those before.
The main challange of the transition to renewable energy is to always have enough energy available. Those who can offer that to a smaller extent will be paid less. A very important advantage of the airborne wind power is that the winds are not only stronger at higher altitudes, they are more reliable, too. In the future most of the solar power will go to some kind of storage (additional cost, less efficient). The airborne wind power can "always" be sold directly and at higher prices.
While I am writing this, an interesting question comes to my mind: How close to each other can airborne power elements be put? On the ground you need quite some distance between them due to the effect they have on the wind behind them. But the kites are so small and can fly at different hights that it mighte be possible to let them fly quite close. Making sure they fly in parallel should not be that difficult. And maybe they could even be mechanically connected on the ground so that less generators are needed. That may be something worth talking to the macufacturers about.
French brothers Bruno and Dominique Legaignoux invented the efficient kite design in the 1980s. Great potential for niche applications.
Cool idea, but I do see a problem. Obviously, we would need fields of these. In order to avoid tangling two tethers together, they would have to be spaced twice the tethers length apart. At 800m, that’s 1.6km between towers. Meanwhile, that space below its entire circumference must be kept clear and basically unused.
Maybe offshore, from a drone boat or something?
My idea is to use a spring loaded ratchet mechanism with a flywheel on the ground based generator to pulse the tether. Similar to how a rowing exerciser works. Makes the kite very simple as it doesn't have to fly around in figure eights etc. Just stays up in the air and repetitively yanks on the tether....
how does it yank on the tether? What design you have in mind? Wing ? What about spring force being different at different heights?
To optimize the function, the spring action would need to be dynamically adjustable, and the kite needs to pulse its pull to resonate with the ratchet spring ...
As a sport kite flyer I can say definitely that figure eights provide much more pull and are inherently stable
I have an idea for an electric flying glider that charges its batteries while in the air when in excess lift/thermals, and or on the ground in sufficiently strong winds! Similar to airborne wind turbines but just has to make enough power for itself to remain airborne with its dual purpose motors/generators.
Just a heads up, you missed one crucial aspect of these approaches: they significantly increase the projected area that the kites can sweep out relative to their size (ignoring the balloon one of course). also there is a tidal version of this.
maybe instead of space elevators , carbon nanotubes would be used to build the tether for one of these instead.
Dont think the tether was mentioned as a problem
@@Scissors69 for stormy places
@@Scissors69 There was a brief mention of a tether being as strong as, but 1/7th the weight of, steel. Kevlar perhaps. Probably if one had a yet lighter tether one could go higher, which is apparently always better (modulo regulatory issues).
I can see them working in some areas.
As a native floridan who just went through a second hurricane, I'd say tropical places prone to such weather are not it's market.
Oooh, congratulations on submitting your thesis! May your defence be mighty, and your challengers too short of sleep to make a strong resistance :)
This is of the same quality as The B1M. I'm loving this new look.
The sheer number of accidents this will cause with general aviation makes it an idea I'd be very much against!!
What sort of altitude are you flying at?! Do you not have charts with danger areas or restricted airspace?
Is my man flying NOE all the time or something??
My understanding is that any cowling deceases the flow through the turbine when mounted in free space.
Many models incorrectly impose boundary conditions that are more appropriate for a turbine in a cowling in a tube.
Hey, great to meet you yesterday at fully charged. Best of luck with everything.
Was great to catch up Pete!
@@ZirothTech how was the test drive? If you're ever passing this area again let's go for a beer and talk about nurd shit.
The more I look into wind energy the better solar looks. So much complexity, moving parts, and huge variability in wind strength make this an almost impossible goal.
One of my favourite ever episodes in the sadly-missed omegataupodcast was on this subject. Note sure if I'm allowed to link to it here, but it's in their online archive, episode 98
Anyone who has flown kites recognize gusts and wind shifts in only a few feet feet causes the kite to shift, swing, and eventually fall. Even if you get a kite "stable" with a tail, it is never stable day after day, week after week. Eventually the wind gusts, and shift in wind in level, e.g. 20 ft to 40 ft, 40 ft to 60 feet, all effect the kite.
You've launching a wind turbine "kite".
What exactly is the material in the tether? Me guessing that there's a materials/cost limit that's nixing these startups
Firstly congratulations on submitting thesis and free time.
Secondly awesome video and concept
Just wondering could they consider using a tube which is shrouded in Kevlar or something with high tensile strength, this can then be used to supply gas to lift and deflate or slowly pump up water to act as ballast to make sail heavier and come down. Even if it had two lite weight tubes one higher in foil the other lower so the lower one for buoyant gas the higher one for denser air, when you need to lower it switch valve so the heavier air coming in at the bottom will displace lite gas which is removed by displacement back down the tube into a reservoir this will represent the cyclic lift and lower of foil. As for water yes I know there would be issues using public supply because the height local pressure wouldn't e high enough but a little pump connected to solar should do it whether it's air or water being pumped they are both fluids.
Take care m8, keep being awesome, from some random Kiwi in New Zealand "Kia Kaha" - "Stay Strong".
I have been wondering about the possibility of using the Cody War Kite design, which could lift humans up as observation posts, and instead fix onto it a wind turbine.
Im sure there are many impracticalities that I dont know, but the idea intrigues me.
congrats all getting through the phd! is your defense finished, or did you have to do that pre-submission?
You should cover Minesto - and read up on their story.
yes wind turbines easily could rival the efficiency of airbone wind turbines because you cant have a big turbine flying but you can increase the radius of ground wind turbines and if you double the radius enegery output is quadrupeled
You could just quadruple the area of the kite then?
I've been using wind traps on Arrakis for ages.
Don't those worms generate unlimited power
@@INVAZOR33 😅😅😅
The one in the thumbnail reminds me of the wind turbines they had in the Divergent movies. I honestly think doing something similar in real life would be a smarter idea. I’m sue many people have experienced strong wind gusts walking between office buildings in a city. Imagine downtown L.A. or NYC with dozens of wind turbines scattered across the city’s. With the right optimizations each 50 story building could power themselves.
Having fly a kite, I never managed to pilot it with a single wire. I may be stupid,... Wait I'm stupid, but I managed to make awesome figures with a kite which had two wires, one for each side. I could have it go where I wanted and even reel it easily making it go above me.
Yes IA can do a lot. But honnestly I kind of feel like any of theses designs could get a lot more control with 2 wires. There may be issues with it (especially wires getting tangled, and maybe rubbing each others (wich could be a no-no), but I think that you could pretty much manage it with a rotating arm on the ground with both cables preventing them to ever tangle, just making the same moves as the kite no matter what.
I guess they already though about that but it is kind of strange to see. Especially since it is kinda complex to get a computer controling it. I feel like getting more control easier is better here, so instead of IA, you could rely on scripts.
Well done completing your drudge through the pit of self doubt of writing your thesis
Beautifully Done. No need to hang in there and wait. You start inventing! I liked the lighter than air blimp with the internal turbine.. Vast potential and simplicity. What's not to like? Peace out and Thanks again!
Wind power has stuff all energy because of the area square rule. You need a massive surface area for any reasonable energy generation. Solar stomps wind energy per metre square.
Congrats! Been a joy to watch this channel grow and I can't imagine accomplishing what you have academically on top of it all. Bravo. To many more years!
Thank you! Exciting times ahead :D
I’m curious where these people get the energy from. Just doing basic chores and obligations takes it out of me. School and creating material and everything else on top? Unreal
Seems overly complicated for what it tries to achieve. Not even having a constant energy transformation as wind turbines.
In my opinion it's all a bit of a wet startup inventor dream, like the HYPELOOP
Nice intro into the quest for Airborne Wind Energy! Today's prototypes are not the ionic form of AWE. Advanced Kite Networks can power the World.
I fell for this when I was younger. I thought this would be the future of energy. I was also really high on tidal energy. Tidal might well be a supplementary source for certain locations, but I've come to accept that it's almost certainly never going to be a heavy part of our energy mix.
High altitude wind though, I am now convinced, is just a scam. I don't mean in the literal sense, but in the sense that this is never going to be a thing that scales. By the time it gets economical, odds are good that fusion will be arriving, and that will blow everything out of the water. I'm not saying that because I think fusion is just around the corner, I'm saying it because I think high altitude wind is a looong way from being economical. I hope they prove me wrong. I've been wrong before...but I've been right before as well.
I'm upset you didn't mention KiteGen, in my opinion one of the best company to explore such a technology
This generator on the ground system seems terrific. I never heard of it before your video. Enough to make me be a subscriber
Compare the infastructure cost per KwHr, and I would be pretty sure the foundations for any tether system eg mass to restrain a variable (snatching) load would be compable to a traditional wind turbine. Then, there are the cost and durability requirements of the tether. I'm guessing that over a 20+ year system life, this would require multiple replacement cycles along with constant monitoring and maintainence. Now airspace, go to your local winch launching gliding club. A wire going up to 2000+ feet presents a catastrophic air traffic hazard, so any implementation would require a no-fly zone around the total systems 3d area of operation. Food for thought.
Congratulation to your Phd submission !
Don't you hate it when the commercial made by the host gets interrupted by a UA-cam commercial?
"High-altitude wind turbines possess too much efficiency to ignore"
Absent a cost-benefit analysis, this is a purely emotional statement
I agree, but I think it’s the emotion that makes it too hard to ignore, not much looks promising on a cost-benefit analysis until it’s a more mature technology!
I wish they could harness my trapped wind
😂
I think we should attach two ground anchors to each kite. This will limit the space the kite can fly to.
here is a problem with each unit needing to be roughly 2 km apart from the next unit and if they generate 400kw you are going to need an area of clear land 10 kilometre long 2 kilometres wide the same area covered with solar panel would produce a lot more power and mooring them off shore introduces a whole new level of complexity
Congratulations on submitting your phd thesis!
Thank you!
We need SUSTAINABLE energy. Energy production that can be sustained- when the wind stops blowing, the sun goes down, and the subsidies dry up.
Thanks for the update!
Congratulations on the thesis submission! What's the title?
Thank you! It is titled 'Real-Time Thermal Modelling of Electric Machines Using Machine Learning' - Video to come when I have completed my viva :D
@@ZirothTech WHATHELL IS A **VIVA**??
@@bellytripper-nh8ox In the USA we call it a "thesis defense." It's where he has to explain his research to a committee of people with expertise in the subject matter, present the evidence and the work he's done, and defend the truth of his findings.
Rather than just wind energy you can collect aerostatic energy the higher off the ground the higher the voltage and amperage you can collect.
How about turbines at a moderate height e.g. 8m on cables between towers? Many ways to make the towers, the idea is to maximise the overall blade/ air interaction area. Hopefully 100m with 1.5m radius turbines is as good as one huge big turbine in the sky.
Congrats Dr. Ziroth!
This might be effective on plants like Jupiter, but they have 100 years storms that never end
If they could figure out how to avoid tangles on a wind farm maybe figure out how to deal with them need blades, putting their anchors up on top of existing windmills.
Hi Ziroth, sorry but at minute 2,42 you mentioned a quadcopter and specifically one of Skypull, now skypull generate energy on the ground so not a flygen!!!
elegant and beautiful, but holy crap wildly inconsistent to be pointless to even build out beyond proof of concept.
Overly complicated for what it's trying to achieve
cool concept
but the more moving parts a system has the more likely it is going to have issues.
Solar panels on all roofs, nuclear/water for the base load and wind wherever best economical sensible
There are thermal plants with plasma digging that sound interesting, but it seems all too far away for the big shift in power production needed TODAY
deep core geothermal is the energy source we need to be investing in.
The floating aerostats used expensive helium and that IMO was their downfall pun intended they should have used cheap hydrogen for lift just suffering the occasion boom with a parachute to save the turbine.
Pie in the sky perhaps? Thinking so, but as usual, happy to be proven wrong.
Yeah negotiating the air regs here in Aust would be a challenge at best.
Congrats on the thesis!
You really blew me away here!
Add to that, with access to only a water source, could these balloon-supporter turbines generate and store hydrogen?
Hola! Why waste energy in recover the "kite"? Just fold it,(or deflate it, since it seems to be full of air) so it doesn't fly anymore and just let it fall to the ground. And then inflate it again or "unfold it", and let the process begin again.
Adjustable elevation also allow optimizing wind speed
WICKID!! well done mate, fascinating stuff, will keep in touch. here's something to ponder, extracting energy from the movement of tectonic plates. spk zoon.
Extra long graphite spark plug wires for electric lines.
Copper and aluminum are heavy
Ground Gen wind systems are I think a nonstarter untill the much simpler concept of auxilary pulling sails fon conercaial ships have become common place. The pull of a sail on a ship directly acts to replace fuel which is far more valuable then electricity and dosn't need any generator at all.
Great video! Thanks for sharing.
One of my pet peeves though are statements like x-times lighter/smaller/shorter/etc. At least to me, 7 times lighter means x-7x (or -6x), not x/7 as I assume is what you meant. I'd very much prefer "but at a seventh of the weight." Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest, I'm weird like this. lol 😅
Whether or not this will work remains to be seen, but I believe effortslike this and other green power generation and storage is needed if our species is going to survive the next millennia, if not century.
Just want to know how they handle when there is a launch or landing failure on these kites
Congratulations on the Phd submission 👍😊 hope to see more fascinating content soon 😊
How about trying to make your own system on a small scale? Would make an interesting series.
Perhaps fly-gen works better at a small scale, something practical for camping
Definitely a project on the ideas board!!
No, I don't think this will ever take off! (pun intended)
There is a multitude off practical things that are hard to come around.
Durability is one thing you might get sorted out, but the biggest problem is, you won't get the same powers for the same airspace occupied by a single machine!
Conventional turbines use there whole rotor diameter, those flying wings can't do that even if they try really hard!
No mater how good your wind is, you can't make up for the unused wind area of those kites!
Even worse, it scales real bad, get the think even higher up, you need even more space to fly it. You would need multiple wings flying coordinated side by side to get the same coverage, and seeing them having trouble with a single wing, I can't imagine having them fly multiple ones 10-30 meters apart from each other!
Nore this being any more economical.
Conventional turbines are just too low hanging fruits! 🤷
I really love your channel. You're a smart kid, making the right videos.
Why would there be a 10 hour time limit on a kite?
they need to fold the sail in before pulling it in again to minimise the power use even more
Very, interesting! Fingers crossed
If they could get it in to the jet stream and beam it down they would be on to a serious end game solution.
If you want to see multi-kite turbines
I make #KiteTurbine
A torque to ground transmission solution using tensile networks of kites
Build a bunch of similar ground power systems and have competitions to write the software..
I like this tech but it has to have one of the worst ratios of power vs surface needed. If the cable is 600m long that would be the minimum distance between system for the kites not to get entangled. And then at least twice as much land around it for safety if it falls to the ground. The only way I see a farm of this kites is offshore.