Corey Houle CTO and co-founder
TwingTec AG c/o Empa Überlandstrasse 129 CH-8600 Dübendorf Switzerland corey.houle@twingtec.ch www.twingtec.ch WIND ENERGY 2.0
Safe Testing of Airborne Wind Energy Systems
Corey Houle, Damian Aregger, Florian Bezard, Dino Costa, Cédric Galliot, Flavio Gohl, George Hanna, Jannis Heilmann, Steffen Hessberger, Rolf H. Luchsinger
TwingTec ver the past years, TwingTec has accumulated an excel-lent safety record in the testing of Airborne Wind Energy systems through the adoption of suitable operational procedures. A methodology to assess the effectiveness of such procedures and to assign the additional opera-tional safety requirements in order to ensure the oper-ation stays under control have been formalized through the Specific Operational Risk Assessment (SORA) process. This process was developed for the civil drone industry by the Joint Authority on Rulemaking for Unmanned Sys-tems (JARUS) and is being adopted by Civil Aviation Au-thorities (CAAs) throughout Europe.
This process starts with the development of a Concept of Operations (CONOPs) which describes the not only the system to be deployed but also the organization itself and the various procedures and risk mitigation measures to be applied in order to sufficiently mitigation the various ground and air risk inherent to the operation. Working together with the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA), TwingTec has secured an Operational Approval (OA) for pilot system (see picture) test operations at
multi-ple sites in Switzerland. An overview of the SORA process which was followed to apply for this OA will be presented along with some general guidelines for the safe testing of AWE systems.
TwingTec pilot system.
