My hat goes off to Bill Tai and Suzi Mai for the amazing Mai-Tai Kiteboarding camp on Maui. While the wind conditions were a disappointment, the most incredible thing about this camp was the people who attended. It seemed like every time I turned around I was meeting another visionary entrepreneur or venture capitalist. Kite-boarding seems to attract a unique set of adrenaline junkies who are generous, funny, and kind. I made some good friends this week, and extend an open invitation to anyone on the trip to ride with me in North Carolina.

When I stepped off the plane on Friday, May 9th the winds were blowing over 30 knots. I arrived early to try and get some work done with Dan Tracy at Kites For Sail. I stayed with Dan at his very cool place out in Haiku. Thanks Dan!

Unfortunately, the forecast was for light Kona winds coming in for the main days of the camp on Tuesday-Friday. Luckily I was able to take advantage of the stronger trade winds to ride on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday at Kanaha (Kite Beach). Watching the professionals ride on those days was unbelievable. Video doesn’t do justice to the awesome athletic abilities of these riders. It has to be seen in person to truly appreciate the skill and power required to pull off some of their tricks.

Even without wind on Tuesday-Friday I had a great time. Tracy and Kim from Charles River Ventures managed some amazing logistical feats, and the Silcon Valley Bank events were also a ton of fun.

On Saturday and Sunday the winds returned. They were not as strong as the previous week, but I was still able to ride my 8m Cabrinha SwitchBlade 3 (BUY THIS KITE!) on Saturday. Jesse Richman was also kiting that day, and that kid can throw down! Just unbelievable to watch the effortless grace Jesse brings to kiting.

On Sunday Dan and Ian demonstrated their latest prototype. Their new approach to kite propulsion is totally revolutionary. After the demo all I could do was clap my hands at Dan and Ian’s technical prowess and achievement. Kite For Sails’ product will turn the sailing world upside down. I wish I had a million dollars to invest in their company.

Thank you Bill for your generous invitation to this event. You are a great ambassador for the sport, and I look forward to kiting with you again soon.

Jeff Kafka took this picture of me learning how to jump. Next year I’ll learn how to land.

WindLift is moving to North Carolina in June. My wife matched at Duke University for her medical residency so it will work out well for both our jobs.

It has simply proven impossible to maintain any kind of prototype testing schedule here in Madison. Between the record snowfall 100+ inches (normally 40 inches), and extreme cold weather I am about 3 months behind on my business plan.

I grew up in Minnesota, and spent a winter working up in the Boundary Waters as a camp maintenance guy. The winter weather hasn’t bothered me, but it has been tough to get the volunteers I need to help out with prototype testing. Because our testing is mainly on windy days, and we are constantly tweaking the machine (cold aluminum and steel) it has been pretty miserable working outside. Just to make it clear that this season has been exceptional I found this blurb from the Weather Channel website…

“No Index City had more days this winter that registered 10 or more degrees below historical average than Madison (25). During the two weeks beginning on February 10th, the capital of Wisconsin endured 11 days of temps -10.0 degrees or more vs. history, with the final three days checking in at -21.0, -23.5 & -22.0.”

Anyway we are taking a cue from the Wright Brothers and moving our prototype testing to the outer banks of North Carolina.  Hopefully we will not run into a hurricane.

We finally got some video of the Truck-Mounted WindLift Kite Engine in action. The weather is finally warming up, and we are making great progress everyday.

It was a beautiful day and we were able to try out the new springs Chris made for the stops on the boom. After many adjustments to the steering system we finally got things working pretty well for a 7.5M HQ-Apex kite. The steering worked well, but we weren’t able to get any good shots of the mechanism cycling.

There are 4 critical bolts that hold the boom arm on the rotating post. Last week we put Locktite on those bolts to hold them in place. Unfortunately the LockTite didn’t cure properly in the cold weather, those bolts came loose, and the whole boom arm slipped off the center post. This could have been a total disaster, but luckily nothing was permanently damaged. We are going to redesign that linkage to insure that nothing like that happens again. It seems that there is a variation of Murphy’s Law that applies to video cameras.

We finally got a break in the weather on March 11 and had our first successful test! The reciprocating kite engine is cycling, and we are measuring the power output through our digital data acquisition system. We flew a 5 meter HQ- Apex in 5-25 mph winds. It was very gusty, but we were able to get some good results. Here are some pictures.

The 5 meter kite pulled like crazy.  When the kite powered up the steering was hard to handle, but the de-power systems worked great. The system didn’t damage the kite or the lines. Even still we flew with short lines and our smallest kite to reduce the risk of damage. Once everything is working well we will scale up to bigger kites and longer lines.  We also have some designs to make the steering much easier to handle as well.

On Wednesday, March 19th we set-up the system out on in a large field with great North-West wind exposure. It was warm and sunny (I got a sunburn), and we got some awesome data collection runs in. Here is a sample of some of the data. We are still figuring out scaling factors and trying to increase the sample rate (thus no x-y scales). X is time and Y is power. Measuring the power output has turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. I’ll post real graphs with scaling factors as soon as possible.

Unfortunately we didn’t videotape those testing sessions, and near the end of the day one of the pieces on the system broke. Next week we’ll figure out a good fix for that little design flaw, and hopefully get some video up on YouTube soon. Madison got another 10 inches of snow today, and it might be awhile before we get out in the field again.

Getting to this point has been a tremendous effort. I am incredibly grateful to Jesse, Joel, and the rest of the Design Concepts crew who did such an amazing job.

This is really just the beginning. Watching this prototype in action has revealed some quick and simple changes we can make to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of the system. With a little time and money I am confident we can make portable, cheap wind energy available to everyone. Cheers!

MSN Finance just published a slightly terrifying article by Jon Markman on global grain prices titled, “Could we really run out of food?“.

It is a fascinating article that is a must read for anyone interested in eating.

Two facts he quoted that I found surprising:

1. 24% of US corn crop is currently used in biofuels production

2. A full tank of ethanol in your car uses enough corn to feed a person for one year.

If the peak oil enthusiasts are right we could be driving the global economy toward mass famine.   I only hope I can get the WindLift pumps on the market soon enough to open up new land for irrigation.

General Compression has a plan. They are going to solve the wind power intermittency issue once and for all. Instead of generating electricity with large expensive electric generators… generators that would only run at 20-30% of capacity, lets replace the generators with much cheaper air compressors. Instead of a single stage General Compression has a four stage compressor called the Dragonfly. By air cooling between each compression cycle they increase the efficiency of the compression. The compressed air is piped through a large diameter steel piping network, that doubles as enough storage volume for 6-12 hours. At a central plant waste heat from other sources (like a traditional coal, gas, or nuclear plant) is transferred to expanding air and run through a turbine to generate electricity.

Their current models call for 1.5 MW wind towers. I wonder if their technology could be economically scaled down to a 20 kW machine.

Lemofouet and Rufer at the Industrial Electronic Laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland put out an interesting paper comparing lead acid batteries, compressed air, and hydraulic accumulators for energy storage. Here is a link to their paper. The title, “Hybrid Energy Systems based on Compressed Air and Supercapacitors with Maximum Efficiency Point Tracking.”, makes no sense to me, but the paper is well written and the data clearly presented.

This paper is very valuable because it didn’t just go into a technology comparison, but followed up with a well thought economic evaluation of the systems.

This table shows the relative costs of a lead-acid battery system, a hydraulic accumulator system, and a compressed air system. The cool thing about this is that is demonstrates the cost effective nature of compressed air, and how cheaply it would be to build a compressed air system that stores much larger amounts of kite energy. I am attracted to compressed air storage systems because of their environmentally friendly nature (no lead/acid), and the ability of compressed air pumps to handle large variations in input power and storage volumes cost effectively.

I am looking for a good chart that compares various water pumps, air compressors, and electric generators based on their cost, power ranges, and efficiency. The idea is to figure out which method would be most cost effective for storing the highly variable power outputs of the WindLift system.

Para-flite, Inc. has built the biggest para-foil in the world for airdropping military equipment.

Their latest model is 836 m^2 (9000 sq. ft.) with a windspan of 170 ft. This monster can deliver cargo up to 30,000 pounds from 25,000 ft. After leaving the plane it can fly by GPS a distance of 40 kM to a drop zone smaller than a football field. Check out the pictures on their website. WOW!

It would be cool if we could get some investment in peaceful applications of this technology.  I can’t wait to try out something like this as a kite.

In “The Invention of Everything Else” Samantha Hunt has written a hypnotic novel about invention, love, and Nikola Tesla. My wife brought the book home from the library, and I devoured it last night. It was filed under “romance” which turned out to be strangely appropriate. This novel is a journey into the magic and madness of invention. The wild spell that grabs hold of an inventor and drives them to do the impossible. Ms. Hunt does such a masterful job weaving fact and fantasy, history and fiction, that I woke up today in a totally new reality. It was one of those bright shiny mornings with the sun glistening on the snow, my son discovering a new toy, my wife well rested after sleeping in, and me dreaming about all the possible ways that kite energy could reshape the world in a tribute to Tesla.

The story takes place at the Hotel New Yorker in 1943. By interweaving the life of a curious chambermaid with Nikola Tesla’s epic creations it explores the technological foundations of the “economy” we know today.

I am endlessly fascinated by 19th century inventors, and Tesla is the greatest of them all. He has gone by many honorifics like, “Master of Lightning”, but my favorite is. “The Forgotten Father of Today“. The short list of his inventions include Alternating Current, Tesla Coils, Radio, Radio control, Hydro-electric Power, and Induction motors. Because Tesla wasn’t interested in academics his pioneering work in x-rays, vacuum tubes, logic gates, neon tubes, fluorescent lights, electron microscopy, radio telescopy, particle physics, and resonance are still unappreciated to this day. Tesla also had plans for microwave ovens, radar, automobile ignition systems, and the wireless transmission of electricity. Other inventions such as the bladeless disk turbine engine, and particle beam weapons are only becoming possible today after advances in materials science.

Nikola Tesla has been much abused by history. Thomas Edison is responsible for much of this. The war between Alternating and Direct Current was the first format war. This format war made the Beta/VHS, Windows/Unix, and HDDVD/Blu-ray wars seem like friendly rivalry. Edison pulled out all the stops to convince the world that AC electric was to dangerous, going so far as to invent an AC electrocution device that was used to electrocute stray dogs, cats, and even an elephant. Ironically DC electric may have caused less electrocutions, but the hotter wires are a major fire hazard and caused many more deaths from fire than AC caused from electrocution. In the end the immense cost and safety advantages of AC electric drove Edison out of the power business, but ironically ended up opening up huge new markets for his lightbulbs. It should be noted that Edison didn’t invent lightbulbs, he figured out how to make them last longer.

Edison never forgave Tesla and mounted a campaign to totally discredit Tesla and erase him from history. Tesla’s more radical inventions were easily spun by the media into the rantings of a mad scientist. Radio telescopy became “Tesla talks to Martians”, particle beams became “Tesla’s Death Ray”. The fact that Tesla was a a Serbian immigrant in an era of rampant bigotry against eastern-Europeans probably didn’t help his cause in the popular press either.

His numerous eccentricities, terrible business sense, and complete naivete towards the practical dishonesty of most men ultimately led to his total impoverishment. He also made some key errors in his quest for the wireless transmission of electricity that pulled crucial funding away from more profitable projects. It is true that Tesla was repeatedly lied to and taken advantage of by many of the key business leaders of his day. He famously ripped up a royalty agreement with Westinghouse that would have earned him many millions of dollars, and was later sued by Westinghouse for some generators he was using in a wireless project. Edison promised him $50,000 if Tesla would improve the operations of Edison’s New York grid (saving Edison over $100,000), and when Tesla demanded the money Edison laughed in his face and told him it was an “American Joke”. Experiences like these soured Tesla on “capitalism”, and perhaps led him to place the ideology of “free energy” over the practical impossiblity of his method.

The modern world would be simply inconceivable without Tesla’s radical rethinking of the possibilities of electricity. It is only recently that people have begun to recognize Tesla as the true father of the modern electrical age.

Update: Christian Science Monitor has an excellent review of the book here.