[lorenzo]

Skysails, a German company, is creating the new age of sail.

http://skysails.info/index.php?id=13

Shipping sucks up huge quantities of oil and pollutes big time. A skysail can reduce the energy needs of a ship by 30 to 50%. This is just fantastic. Just consider how much oil we'd save if all ships had such a sail.
A cheap fly-by-wire computer, a huge kite, and a rig -- and voilà, your mega oil tanker gets pulled forward at a steady speed.

I'm wary of technofixes, but sometimes they're so simple and they work so well, that I become an optimist once again.


MarkL posted a New Scientist article on SkySails' successful tests:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/mg18524881.600

Peak Oil? What's that?

[Lehyina]

That could bring about a useful reduction in bunker fuel consumption.
Pity skysails aren't applicable to the automobile.

[MarkL]

..

[frankthetank]

KANSAS—In 1867, a railroad inspector built a sail-equipped railcar to help him on his rounds in western Kansas. In September of that year, he traveled 13 miles between Ellis (pop. 1,702) and Hays (pop. 19,230) in 40 minutes, at times reaching speeds of 40 mph.

[boilingleadbath]

Well, it only took industrial scociety 200 years, but they'v finaly significantly improved opon the sail! yippy!

It seem that the 30-50% savings assumes that you help it with your eingiens, so, I would assume that you could not use them, even if it ment you went slower.

I'd assume that it takes a bit of electricity to operate (athough you might be able to substitute manual labor), but you could generate that with a little propeler hooked up to a generator.

[born2respawn]

Not much cop if you're crossing the equator (duldrums and all that) but it'll definately have its uses when the price of oil goes up.

[Wallygator]

[quote="lorenzo"]Skysails, a German company, is creating the new age of sail.

Sails on ships. Ooohhh! What an innovative idea. I bet one of these days the HarleyDavidson company will discover that if they put pedals on their bad boy machines that riders will be able to consume less gas. I'd like to see Orange County Choppers come out with something like that. If you think that old guy screams at his son alot wait until he sees this. It'll work like this: When you're cruising on the highway you can pedal at leisure adding just a little to the total power output. It may not look cool right now but after PO who knows?

[lorenzo]

Skysails, a German company, is creating the new age of sail.

Sails on ships. Ooohhh! What an innovative idea. I bet one of these days the HarleyDavidson company will discover that if they put pedals on their bad boy machines that riders will be able to consume less gas. I'd like to see Orange County Choppers come out with something like that. If you think that old guy screams at his son alot wait until he sees this. It'll work like this: When you're cruising on the highway you can pedal at leisure adding just a little to the total power output. It may not look cool right now but after PO who knows?

Why don't you read the article before you make yourself look like an idiot?

[ECM]

This is basically a return to the old ways and a reduction of technology dependence. This is the type of thing that humans will have to do to survive peak oil/NG with minimal backslide. The best part of this is the skysail should be more effective than the old mast type sails due to harnessing higher wind speeds at greater elevation much like wind turbines do.

I actually prefer the Danish windship design. One of the problems that may arise with the skysail is the stress placed on the ship where the cable is attached.

[Wallygator]

Why don't you read the article before you make yourself look like an idiot?

Read the article. I still like my pedal powered Harley.

[CalgaryEng]

This is basically a return to the old ways and a reduction of technology dependence. This is the type of thing that humans will have to do to survive peak oil/NG with minimal backslide. The best part of this is the skysail should be more effective than the old mast type sails due to harnessing higher wind speeds at greater elevation much like wind turbines do.

I actually prefer the Danish windship design. One of the problems that may arise with the skysail is the stress placed on the ship where the cable is attached.

It would not occur to me to say that using such sails is going back to the old ways or represents reduction of technology dependence. The sophistication of these sails and the required control and navigation systems seems very high.

For many out there it seems that the mention of technology brings only images of machines that belch black smoke. To me the mention of technology brings the image of a passive solar home that requires no supplemental natural gas in a nothern climate or a high speed flywheel that floats in a vacuum on magnetic bearings to store mechanical energy.

I think that these sails are really neat and I enjoyed reading about them. I would love to tackle the job of writing software for the control system.

[gg3]

I agree it has potential even though there are parts of the world where it wouldn't be viable due to lack of wind.

The fly in the ointment seems to be the issue of launching and recovering the "kite." Also I suspect that there will be chaos-math factors that complicate things somewhat, i.e. the potential for trouble due to relatively rapid localized fluctuations in wind over the open oceans that we don't quite understand yet because we've never had a reason to look for them until now.

Even so, do it. Everything counts.

[Starvid]

Well, or we could just use nuclear powered ships.

They even work when the wind is not blowing.

[kiteship]

I agree it has potential even though there are parts of the world where it wouldn't be viable due to lack of wind.

The fly in the ointment seems to be the issue of launching and recovering the "kite." Also I suspect that there will be chaos-math factors that complicate things somewhat, i.e. the potential for trouble due to relatively rapid localized fluctuations in wind over the open oceans that we don't quite understand yet because we've never had a reason to look for them until now.

Even so, do it. Everything counts.

Hi all,

I just found this discussion site. Cool stuff!

There are several companies working to research the future potential for kites on vessels. KiteShip is actually doing something about it--we're selling kites as large as 4500 sq ft--at retail--and installing them aboard boats (yachts and powerboats) today. Our biggest kite puts out more than 165 kw at a cost of less than $20k and a weight under 200 lbs. By comparision, a 300 kw wind turbine (30m disk) puts out 175 kw at the same wind speed we get 165, costs $300k and weight 40 tons. A single mast on the Danish Windship puts out about 350 kw, is expected to cost $1.25 million and will weigh 125 tons.

A couple of answers to questions here; No, the attachment point is not the big deal. Arranging for bulkheads, ballast, getting masts under bridges and loading cranes--all for conventional sailing masts--is a lot bigger deal. A ship's mooring/towing bits are designed to carry sufficient loads for a kite to be attached there. Arranging similar hard points elsewhere is not a big deal. Unlike sails, kites can be very, very easily retrofitted onto existing vessels.

As to wind at sea, these have been very, very extensively studied--both in older times, and in modern, for shipping, the military and world-class sailing yacht racing. We know more about these winds than we ever did before. With this knowwledge we can very accurately predict the amount of potential savings on most any ship, course and time of year.

As to launching, flying and recovery--these have been very difficult problems to solve; until recently nobody had an effective--proven--method for launching kites larger than about 300 sq ft. KiteShip has been working on this problem for more than 25 years; today we regularly and routinely launch, fly and recover very, very large kites, unassisted, from the decks of large yachts and powerboats, manually with few crewmen. We have had no scaling problems, and are completely confident at sizes as much as 10X larger than the 4,500 sf we are flying today (a World Record kite, by the way--by nearly a factor of ten)

Last, somebody said they'd enjoy working on control algorithms? Drop us a note; we're interested.

More information here, including videos of the record kite flying, and many others: http://www.kiteship.com

Cheers,

Dave Culp
KiteShip

[gg3]

Welcome to the forum, kiteship.

I really do hope you can solve the "launch and recover" issue.

As for getting under bridges etc., a small conventional powerplant should be sufficient for close-in navigation.

Nuclear ships: Obviously a good thing for time-sensitive cargo. The point of kite-ships is to handle cargo that is less time-sensitive. This isn't an "either/or," it's another "both/and."

[kiteship]

Welcome to the forum, kiteship.

I really do hope you can solve the "launch and recover" issue.

As for getting under bridges etc., a small conventional powerplant should be sufficient for close-in navigation.

Thanks for the welcome.

It's not a matter of "whether we can" solve the launch/recover issue--we already have. We've been at this for decades, have already made most of the mistakes.

For the near future, all sailing vessels will be "assisted;" the ships will have large engines, too, so getting into/out of port's not a problem; bridge and crane clearance is. Only kiteships can be 1) retrofitted economically and 2) can get into many existing ports without striking their masts, a financial improbality.

Masted vessels have a very limited future--it's the cargo cranes that doom them. Both oil and containerized cargo need to use existing facilities if they're to be sold to existing shipping companies. Limiting sail to third world unimproved ports and non-containerized cargo bypasses 80-90% of the world's shipping.

Cheers,

KiteShip

[EnviroEngr]

kiteship,

If you need any 'administrative' assistance on the site, make sure to let any of the Senior Moderators know by way of Private Messaging (PM) or post directly on the thread.

EE

[cube]

Well, or we could just use nuclear powered ships.

They even work when the wind is not blowing.

How about nuclear powered ships assisted by sails? Or maybe a sailing ship assisted by nuclear power?

[lorenzo]

Welcome from me too, Kiteship. Your work looks pretty impressive. How big are you planning to go? What kind of ships are you focussing on to kickstart widescale adoption of the technology?

[Aaron]

Wonderful idea...

I own a traction kite myself and imagine this technique can be most useful.

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