In reply to Stephen A. Lawrence's message of Thu, 30 Aug 2007 08:57:08 -0400: Hi, [snip] >Is there a picture of the actual mill anywhere? I've seen concept >drawings of laddermills but never a photo, as far as I can recall. > >The Dutch version of the story (which I read, in highly scrambled form, >grace of Babelfish) seems to say they've also demo'd this in a concert >with Jan Ackerman in which his equipment was powered by electricity from >a kite (albeit the wind failed and they apparently had to run on >batteries during the concert, but the batteries had been charged by >another kite so it was still a legit demo -- at least I /think/ that's >what it said). > >So, Ockels is generating electricity alright -- but certainly not from >the piece of equipment in the picture, which is just a kite, no dynamo, >no pulleys, no nothing which would do the work. So I was just wondering >if there's a shot of the part that makes the juice anywhere. [snip] After listening to the explanation, it goes roughly like this:-
As the kite goes up, the string drives a wheel which is connected to a dynamo. When at height, a command is sent to the kite to fly down again (rather than having to be dragged down). Once at the bottom, the cycle begins anew. The inventor says that kite mills up to 50 kW can be built, but then suggests that 3 of these would be enough to power the city of Groningen. (I suspect he is off by about a factor of 1000). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
