A German startup is bringing the lightness of kites into green energy production with small flying wind turbines that use 10 times less material at half the cost of traditional options.
Last June, somewhat quietly due to Covid, KiteKRAFT reached an important milestone with a 2 meter wide prototype wind kite. On this occasion, the flying wind turbine has its first flight in figure 8, the movement that will provide the system's wind energy.
The wind kite features small rotating wind turbines on board, which essentially act like regular blade tips.
KiteKRAFT aircraft does not need towers made of hundreds of tons of concrete and steel or a foundation to keep the tips of the blades in the air, but uses intelligent algorithms to find the best position in mid-air.
A revolutionary device
Logistics, installation and inspections are much simpler and the kite can easily reach stronger winds at higher altitudes. “Cost savings of more than 50% are possible compared to other sources”, the company says on your blog.
Another advantage is that a kiteKRAFT system is hardly visible (no towers and no huge blades). This often raises public doubts about such structures in their landscape.
“We are proud to have gotten to this point in just over a year since founding the company,” says co-founder and CTO Florian Bauer.
But the birds still take risks
There is some refinement though: Bauer admits that their KiteKRAFT wind kite system is similar to large wind turbines in interfering with birds.
“That's why we will probably implement a protection system soon. The kite will go into standby automatically in the presence of a flock of birds, and will resume collecting energy after it passes.”
Where will the KiteKRAFT wind kite be useful?
KiteKRAFT's mission is to provide small energy grids, otherwise powered by diesel generators and / or solar energy.
Each kiteKRAFT system has quite a few sensors. The wind kite computer leverages algorithms and uses sensor data for autonomous flight and to generate energy from the wind efficiently.
A computer with wings
KiteKRAFT system owners and inspection personnel can access the kite remotely with an app and view the current status or live video streaming from onboard cameras.
The app will also allow certain commands, such as landing the kite for inspection.
At all times, the kite records important flight and performance data and sends it to kiteKRAFT servers for analysis by the company's engineers, which improves future reliability.
Since the wind kite is essentially “a computer with wings”, a flying wind turbine, its performance and reliability is likely to improve exponentially over the years and we look forward to seeing how future versions improve the handling of the wind kite. 'wind power.
Here is the video of the test flight:
