Airborne Wind Energy

Airborne Wind Energy

An introduction to an emerging technology.

Summary

The doctoral training network AWESCO (Airborne Wind Energy System Modelling, Control and Optimisation) was launched in January 2015 funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 642682. The shared objective of the training network was to collaboratively address and solve the scientific and technical challenges of airborne wind energy. The innovative renewable energy technology which harvests wind energy by means of tethered wings has the potential to substantially reduce the cost of energy generation and its environmental footprint.

Aerodynamic model identification of an autonomous aircraft for airborne wind energy

Summary Airborne wind energy (AWE) refers to a novel technology capable of harvesting energy from wind by flying crosswind patterns with tethered autonomous aircraft. Successful design of flight controllers for AWE systems relies on the availability …

LiDAR-based characterization of mid-altitude wind conditions for airborne wind energy systems

Summary Engineers and researchers working on the development of airborne wind energy systems (AWES) still rely on oversimplified wind speed approximations and coarsely sampled reanalysis data because of a lack of high-resolution wind data at …

Modeling, Identification, Estimation and Adaptation for the Control of Power-Generating Kites

Large-scale kites, flying high-force crosswind trajectories, have been proposed for wind power generation. A two phase operational cycle generates net positive power using a ground-based motor/generator. In the traction phase the kite flies a …

Modeling, Identification, Estimation and Adaptation for the Control of Power-Generating Kites

Large-scale kites, flying high-force crosswind trajectories, have been proposed for wind power generation. A two phase operational cycle generates net positive power using a ground-based motor/generator. In the traction phase the kite flies a …

Aerodynamic Parameter Identification for an Airborne Wind Energy Pumping System

Airborne Wind Energy refers to systems capable of harvesting energy from the wind by flying crosswind patterns with a tethered aircraft. Tuning and validation of flight controllers for AWE systems depends on the availability of reasonable a priori …

Modeling of an airborne wind energy system with a flexible tether model for the optimization of landing trajectories

Autonomous takeoff and landing is a big challenge in the field of airborne wind energy. We propose numerical methods in order to optimize flight trajectories of a tethered aircraft. These flight trajectories yield a baseline for analyzing takeoff or …

Aerodynamic Parameter Identification for an Airborne Wind Energy Pumping System

Airborne Wind Energy refers to systems capable of harvesting energy from the wind by flying crosswind patterns with a tethered aircraft. Tuning and validation of flight controllers for AWE systems depends on the availability of reasonable a priori …