Development and Testing of a Steering Mechanism Kite Wind Energy Generation
This paper presents the design and testing of a steering me chanism for Laddermill kites. The Laddermill is a novel concept to harvest electricity from high altitude winds. The concepts operating principle is to drive a generator with kites. Several kites are high in the air at an altitude of more than 1km. All kites are connected to a single cable that connects to a drum in the groundstation. The lower part of the cable is connected to the kites and is wound around a drum. The kites pull the rope from the drum, which in turn drives a generator. When all of the cable is pulled off the drum, the kites fly down in a configuration that generates significantly less lift than during the ascent. This way the lower part of the tether is retrieved onto the drum and the process is repeated. The concept allows very large single unit power. At this moment, surf kites are used for the Laddermill because they have high performance and are commercially available. This paper presents the design of a steering mechanism for surfkites for the Laddermill. Several concepts that were built and tested are discussed. The final concept is a mechanism that steers the kite by changing the tow point position of the line on each of the wingtips. When both tow points are changed in the same direction, the attack angle of the kite changes. When the tow points are changed in opposite directions, the kite steers. The mechanism is described in detail and early test results are presented.
Bas Lansdorp, M. Sc. Richard Ruiterkamp W. J. Ockels
Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering
国际会议
2007上海国际风能大会(Wind Power Shanghai 2007)
上海
英文
358-371
2007-11-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）