Professional Documents
Culture Documents
……………………. ………………
Kitenergy project
Wind 3.500 TW
Mankind primary power needs 14 TW
Altitude vs. ground wind
The core is the system of automatic control of the kite flight, called
KSU (Kite Steering Unit)
kite
on board sensors ground sensors
(kite position and speed) (wind speed and
direction,
line strength ,…)
cables
control
software
actuation unit
(electric drives, winches,..)
Kitenergy key technology
In wind towers, the outermost 20% of the blades contributes for 80% of
the power
Wind turbine Kitenergy
Torre eolica
The kite acts as the outermost part of the blades without requiring the
heavy tower
High tech cables
Connecting each power kites to the units at ground level for power
generation, 2 composite cables transmit the traction force and are
differentially adjusted for manouvering
Traction force/Weight:
15 times higher than steel
Energy generation: yoyo configuration
Pav = Pmax ⋅ CF
The Capacity Factor depends on:
power curve of the generator probability of wind speed
KITEnrg
Capacity Factor examples
Linate (IT) B. Aires (AR) Cagliari (IT) Leba (PO) Brindisi (IT) De Bilt (NL)
0.006 0.18 0.31 0.32 0.31 0.36
0.33 0.63 0.56 0.68 0.60 0.71
Capacity factors of wind tower (black) and of KITEnrg-yoyo (orange) in some locations
Wind data taken from the NOAA/ESRL Radiosonde Database
KITEnrg Farm
In a “windy” site:
Kitenergy Technology
– 16 KITEnrg-yoyo/km2
– 32 MW/km2 (rated)
– 22 MW/km2 (average)
Projected cost in 2030 (levelised in 2003 Euros per MWh) of energy from different sources compared
with the estimated cost of Kitenergy
Source: International Energy Agency (IEA), Projected Cost of Generating Energy – 2005 update.
Paris, France: IEA PUBLICATIONS, 2008
Kitenergy development status
Test 1 Test 2
– turbulent wind of about 3-4 m/s at ground – wind of about 1-2 m/s at ground level
level – Kite effective area: 10 m2
– kite effective area: 5 m2, – maximum line length: 800 m
– maximum line length: 300 m
Simulated Simulated
Measured Measured
KSU prototype signal pattern
KSU prototype data acquisition
mario.milanese@kitenergy.net
www.kitenergy.net