Superturbine [sic]

[Connoiseur]

Something looks fishy here!



Maybe someone with some aerodynamics know-how can shed some light here.

[Kleinstein]

I don't see a reason the system to be more efficient or use considerably less material. The wind force for a give power is about the same. So they would need the same size / strength tower (if not more). It will be the same wind force and the same load on the bearing - just with faster rotation.  All the turbines going one direction tend to produce quite some rotation in the air that carries away part of the energy and thusreduce  the efficiency.

With a flexible drive shaft, there will be quite some mechanical stress and possibly fatigue to the shaft. So I would have some doubt on the time it will stand that constant bending with every rotation.

To work efficiently over a range of wind speed the wings need to be adjusted - this could be kind of expensive for so many propellers.

The flying ones would need quite some extra spacing between - so the number of turbines on a given area is rather limited and less power is possible from a given area. With turbulent gusty winds it cold also turn dangerous and may not last long.

There might be a few cases between mountains if the wind has a strong preferred direction where is might work. But I don't see it generally useful, more like  .

There was a flying type of wind turbine before, that was way more fun to watch. It was based on a kind of plane on a line flying circles and producing electricity with propellers that see the higher speed of wind. AFIAK the project got quite some funding, but was canceled after a few prototypes. It kind of worked, but not good enough.

[Gregg]

All this “inventor” has done is designed a big bird slicer.  Good luck getting it past the “environmentalists” etc. Part of the reason most of the newer windmills are so large is to utilize the wind at lower blade velocities some of which is driven by animal rights groups.
Then there is the reliability of the flex drive shaft with varying forces and vibration. 
Less BS than solar roadways, but I wouldn’t invest in it.  The marketing wank associated with this video should be a dead giveaway.

[Kleinstein]

The blade velocity is about the same for all good efficiency windmills. It is something like 3-5 times the wind speed - this is kind of fixed by aerodynamics. The large ones only look slow because of the low RPMs. Still the larger windmill comes across each point less frequent so that the chance of hitting a bird should be a little lower.

[IanMacdonald]

Wind speed typically undergoes a 'step' increase with height, usually somewhere in the 200-400ft range where ground friction effects cease to play a part.  Termed the wind gradient, and well familiar to aviators as it can cause a sudden loss of airspeed on approach. The energy in the wind increases with the cube of the speed. Thus not difficult to see why the corporate monsters are more effective than small homegrown models, since they can get above the wind gradient.

Thus the principle of flying turbines being more effective is true, but the engineering aspects are that they would probably fall to pieces in short order.

[John Heath]

I liked that video. An inventor going the whole nine yards for a better way. A cool way to live life. This being said I am not sure this invention  would stand the test of time. Odd whirling winds looping the cable fans around where they start hitting each other. It only has to happen once every 6 months for it to be a financial disaster. Also will birds adapt to this new variable or will there be a line of dead birds under the new cable wind turbine? However a wind speed increase of 2 is the square of the power , hmm . For high altitude it could be a winner. 

[CatalinaWOW]

The only real question is whether he is ignorant or a charlatan.   He glibly talks of scaling his turbine from a couple of hundred feet to miles (several dozen meters to many kilometers).  Since the shaft has to support delivery of the total power of the turbine to the end point generator it will have to grow in diameter greatly.  Stability of the rig is also an issue and is not totally controlled even in his demonstration.  Even if it doesn't directly break fatigue will be an issue.  As Kleinstein says there will be air rotation around the shaft, more as each propeller is passed.  This can be somewhat compensated by adjusting pitch of downstream propellers, but there are limits.  I really don't think an adjustable pitch option is practical so peak performance will only occur at a specific wind speed.  There are also real issues with aerial navigation.  Finally, the version which is lofted on one end will have to be landed periodically to refill the balloons.  Might be pretty exciting if you can't wait for a day with little or no wind.

I don't know how a credible business proposal could be written around this concept.  It is either a poorly thought out dream or a lie. 

[max_torque]

. Part of the reason most of the newer windmills are so large is to utilize the wind at lower blade velocities some of which is driven by animal rights groups.

er, really?  I suspect it's because tip velocity goes up linearly with blade length, but swept area goes up with the square of the blade length!  Add in the fact that a larger blade must have it's hub at a higher level, ie, in a faster windstream (less drag from the ground below) and it's a complete no-brainer to make wind turbines as large as possible!

[f4eru]

An interesting talk :
https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8877-drones_of_power_airborne_wind_energy

I think the most interesting variant is the parachite style kite, despite the somewhat lower efficiency.
Why ? because when it breaks due to very strong weather, it's really trivial to replace, not like an aircraft with megawatt generators, theter-transmission lines, and whatever other cutting edgetechnology