Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "How spinning kites could power your home - BBC News" video.

A windmill, but with twice the technical problems. It's NOT scalable. As the scale increases, the amount of wind required to lift increased weight and cable thickness increases. And what happens when the wind goes? How does a 10 kilmetre cable return gracefully to earth? Silly idea.
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@KiteTurbine Mere buzzwords. "network kites=" = lots of kites. "robotic deployment" = automated deployment. Deploying ots of kites simply increases the system complexity, power cost and opportunities for failure. This is unlikely to reach a scale that can power a house, much less entire towns. This is pie in the sky.
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@KiteTurbine You haven't even demonstrated the proof of concept at a feasible power output yet - say enough to power a single houuse. We see FAR too many of these fantastical ideas at minute scale and are asked to believe that scaling them up is as easy as imagining it - water from the desert, solar roadways, super high power batteries, hyperlink and more - and by a massive margin, they never amount to anything. You'll excuse my absolute scepticism. What you've showed us so far is a small, exotic kite that generates a small amount of electricity. If this video had had an array up in the air, generating even enough to power an electric car or a small house, it would have been something. The world needs dreamers, and it's a great cause, but the BBC should have waited until you had more than a child's toy to demonstrate. Also, how does being an autogyro help? It reduced the rate of descent, but if the wind just cuts out, or changes direction, you still have hundreds or thousands of feet of wires falling to earth. What's your retrieval strategy as cable length magnifies? Is there a lift to cable to air density ratio beyond which you can no longer go?
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