Offshore High-Altitude Wind Energy Using Controlled Airfoils

This paper investigates the offshore application of an innovative high-altitude wind energy technology. The idea is to exploit the automatic flight of tethered airfoils (e.g. power kites) to extract energy from wind flows blowing between 200 and 800 meters above the sea. The key points of such a technology are described and the related operational parameters are optimized in order to maximize the generated power while satisfying constraints on the maximal loads exerted on the offshore support structure. The obtained results indicate that offshore high-altitude wind energy could bring forth significant advantages in terms of structural loads and, consequently, of offshore platform construction costs.

[1]  Lorenzo Mario Fagiano,et al.  Control of Tethered Airfoils for High-Altitude Wind Energy Generation - Advanced control methods as key technologies for a breakthrough in renewable energy generation [Doctoral dissertation - Ph.D. in Information and System Engineering - Ciclo XXI - Politecnico di Torino] , 2009 .

[2]  P. Fairley Germany's green - energy gap , 2009, IEEE Spectrum.

[3]  Cristina L. Archer,et al.  Global Assessment of High-Altitude Wind Power , 2008 .

[4]  Lorenzo Fagiano,et al.  Power kites for wind energy generation , 2007 .

[5]  Moritz Diehl,et al.  Nonlinear MPC of kites under varying wind conditions for a new class of large‐scale wind power generators , 2007 .

[6]  C. L. Archer,et al.  Evaluation of global wind power , 2005 .

[7]  Lorenzo Fagiano,et al.  Set Membership approximation theory for fast implementation of Model Predictive Control laws , 2009, Autom..

[8]  M. L. Loyd,et al.  Crosswind kite power (for large-scale wind power production) , 1980 .

[9]  Wubbo Ockels,et al.  Towards Flight Testing of Remotely Controlled Surfkites for Wind Energy Generation , 2007 .

[10]  Frank Allgöwer,et al.  Nonlinear Model Predictive Control , 2007 .

[11]  Lorenzo Fagiano,et al.  High Altitude Wind Energy Generation Using Controlled Power Kites , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.

[12]  L. Fagiano,et al.  High-Altitude Wind Power Generation , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion.

[13]  T. Ackermann,et al.  World-wide offshore wind potential and European projects , 2001, 2001 Power Engineering Society Summer Meeting. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37262).

[14]  J. van der Tempel,et al.  Design of support structures for offshore wind turbines , 2006 .