Kite-Powered Ship Launched 211
The Grand Poobah writes "The big-kite technology we discussed last month has officially launched in Hamburg, Germany. Reuters has a writeup of the new technology, which aims to cut fossil fuel use on sea voyages by an estimated 20% by means of a huge computer-controlled kite. The link includes a video."
It's called reinventing the... (Score:5, Interesting)
I predict... (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only one who feels (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Everything old is new again (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. It might be closer to a windmill than a sail... The idea of using the wind for power might be millions of years old, but new ways that do it several orders of magnitude more efficiently, and in significantly different ways, aren't the same tech by any stretch of the imagination.
This is a lot closer to a kite or a parachute. The ONLY similarity is has with a sail is that it happens to be powering a boat in this case. Far more differences than similarities, and I don't hear anyone complaining that sailing ships were just rip-offs of kites...
Eliminating the huge weight, manpower, and most of the wear that was inherent with sails makes this a vastly different product that could well have been a revolution in naval technology (exploration, trade, warfare, etc.) if it was around in the 16th century.
With wind turbines and electric cars you have a point that they aren't really new inventions, but they certainly have been VASTLY refined. In other words, a rocket that can fly to the moon and back isn't an over-sized bit of fireworks, but it's easy to oversimplify anything until it sounds trivial... Hey, a 3GHz dual-core computer is just a bunch of electric switches, and they had those in the 1800s.
This 'kite', however, is decidedly new, by any reasonable metric, and I look forward to seeing if it's actually practical for commercial use on a large scale.
Re:Everything old is new again (Score:2, Interesting)
Wind at higher altitude is more consistent and stronger. Part of the reason americas cup boats have such tall high aspect sails
A kite flies back and forth through the air experiencing an increased wind speed compared to static sail
The center of effort for the force from the kite can be placed very low on the boat so that heeling moment is minimised. So no need for a deep keel or long heavy fragile mast.
With the kite retracted the wind propulsion system is hidden away. So reduced windage when travelling against the wind and no exposed parts in storms.
BMW oracle experimented with a kite instead of a spinnaker but rule restrictions within the americas cup make it hard to work with (Cant fly higher than the mast head, has to be single skin, only 3 control lines). So it was rule restrictions rather than the inherent principle of a kite that excludes it from the americas cup.
Not sure how much real use this will be. (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't use it when heading into the wind - can't tack with a kite.
Can't use it when theres no wind.
Also in the video it seemed to be moving around a lot on its mounting pole when furled up even in the slight breeze. How you'd unfurl it in a strong wind without damage to it or its cables I shudder to think.
Economics look not so good, like awful (Score:2, Interesting)
Just on general principles, that's going to happen about 1/3 the time times maybe 1/2 the time. So actual savings are going to be around 3% ($266/day) That's about $78,000 per year. Barely enough to pay for one employee to manage the kite. Nothing left over to pay the interest ($60,000), or pay off the principal (another $75K over 10 years).
Re:Not sure how much real use this will be. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not a great value (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We're doing it wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
And apparently developing practical, working examples of alternate forms of propulsion using renewable energy for the ships that we will need in 20 years has no part of that?
GTFO. You're talking about some completely insane timeline to completely change our energy infrastructure -- even if fusion power was perfected today, it would take more than 20 years for us to replace every coal plant on earth, and that still doesn't give us any magic solutions for transportation. And these guys come up with a way to right now make it both feasible and economical* to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels in commercial shipping by 20%, even as much as 50% soon, and that's not good enough?
Come on. It's perfectly obvious who has the better idea of how to actually attain your utopian future. And a "drop everything right now, pray we can replace it before our infrastructure collapses" isn't it. Practical, step-wise solutions that actually work are. Kudos to these guys, boo to "if it isn't a magic 100% solution it's nothing".
* And you had better not underestimate the importance of this. Unless you intend on imposing your plan using martial force (and i'd love to see your fossil-fuel-less army) then it's going to have to make sense for everyone to drop what they're using and switch to something cleaner. The rising price of fuel costs is doing a great job of creating the economic motivation, but it's guys like these who have to come up with the actual practical alternatives.