SecondWind - 12-2-2009 at 03:24 AM
A 10m Venom that provides some real power 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/aug/01/elec...
PHREERIDER - 12-2-2009 at 06:06 AM
that would be a SPARC
acampbell - 12-2-2009 at 06:26 AM
Venorator?
Funny, they never described how the mechanical energy of the kite is converted to electricity.
BeamerBob - 12-2-2009 at 06:37 AM
Yeah, I'm more interested in the how than the what if. I saw something in the past that had kites with long lines attached to a wheel around its
circumference. The kites were electronically controlled to power up at the point where their power will advance the wheel throuigh part of a rotation
and then when that kite bottoms out its stroke, it goes into a non-power phase for the other kites to pull it back around. The prototype worked but
I'm not sure what stage the development is in. I'm sure I got the link from here on PKF.
Edit and temporary hijack: You two are too much with the nicknames. Can you guys come up with something equally snappy to identify our little
Carolina/Georgia group? I try but strike out with every idea.
flexiblade - 12-2-2009 at 09:27 AM
There is a company here in California, MAKANI POWER, out in Alameda that is doing research on just this type of technology with money from Google.
Pete Lynn (not the sr.) works there.
Bladerunner - 12-2-2009 at 09:33 AM
I just want the REMOTE.
Then I could be sitting here at work flying a Venom instead of surfing the interweb. 
kiteNH - 12-2-2009 at 10:18 AM
http://www2.me.wpi.edu/wpi-kites/index.php/Main_Page
More kite power research up here in the Northeast USA.
piku303 - 12-2-2009 at 06:37 PM
i see the hardest part of figuring out this technology is kite control...humans are much better at flying power kites than machines. the wind throws a
lot of variables at you. also a difficulty is that a guy would have to go out and change the kites out if there were highwinds to a smaller kite or
larger and so on. it would be a full time job for workeres managing those fields but i love the idea.