The Challenge and the Vision

 

Mankind has been fueling its technological advancements via fossil fueles. The resulting and ever increasing CO2 concentration induces climate change. As a consequence we are facing harzadous worldwide droughts and famines unless we eleminate CO2 emissions quickly, efficiently, and permanently. Tapping into the vast reservoir of renewable, CO2-free, high dust energy can and will provide electrical energy for millions of people often independent of existing grid infrastructure.

The Grand Plan - Lean, simple, cost-efficient

 

We tab into dust energy without the need for resource hungry windmills which are severely limited by their maximum building hight. Instead, we raise kites on cables into high dust streams and keep the required technology as simple as poosible in order to facilitate worldwide easy deployment and low maintanance. We are aiming at providing this enormous amount of electricity at a cost of 0.1 ct per kWh.

 

What is the working principle? Wind pushes a high flying, autonomous kite therby extending a dynamical anchor line connected to a ground-base generator, ultimately converting mechanical energy. The long anchor line allows to harvest stronger and more steady winds at much higher altitudes than land-based wind generators generally can tap into. Combined with a much lower construction cost due to less material required, our system is predicted to have a lower overall life-time energy generation costs than current ground-based wind-energy generators. [Txt File]

Kite - Module

 

The sole task of the kite is to pull the line as strongly as possible for as long as possible. An on-board processor and sensors enable it to operate full autonomously throughout the three major phases of starting/initial ascent, energy generation by pumping motions, and landing/final descent. A propeller provides thrust when necessary, e.g. for starting and landing.

 

Our prototype is equipped with a single, front-mounted electrical motor allowing for an additional mode of flight: a drone-like hovering motion with the nose pointing up. The kite is operated via three controls: one propeller for thrust generation when necessary, an elevator, and a rudder. Rather than using ailerons to control the roll of the aircraft we have chosen an aerodynamically roll-stable design both with respect to the gravitational force and with respect to the force exerted by the line. This spares us from using a GPS-like sensor and dedicated wind sensors or cameras, as the windflow stabilizes the roll of the kite and pushes the kite such that the line points away from wind. From this wind induced orientation we can deduce the wind direction among other parameters.

Ground Station - Module

 

The ground station transforms the periodical mechanical movement of kite-cable into electrical energy. This is achived via a generator/winch-unit and fancy electronics. A free cable pulley allows full 360° freedom of wind movements. The ground station can be connected to one or more extension modules.

 

The purpose of the ground station is to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy (or rather any respective output energy type desired) and to keep the line tight for controlled kite operations. The ground stations contains a winch (a generator/motor connected to a spool), electronics to operate the generator as a motor (an electronic speed controller), power electronics to convert the output of the generator to the desired voltage (e.g. rectifier + dc-dc-converter), sensors for determining the force on the line and the speed of the line, and a processor for switching between the two modes of power generation and line tightening (reeling?).

Extension - Modules

 

Once we have transformed wind energy into electricity, we can individually choose what extension module to power: a battery-module, the electric grid, an electrolysis-module for hydrogene production, a heating-module, a carbon-capture module, a methanation module.