Peter Harrop Founder & Chairman
IDTechEx Ltd. Downing Park Station Road Swaffham Bulbeck Cambridge, CB25 0NW United Kingdom p.harrop@IDTechEx.com www.IDTechEx.com
Commercialisation of AWE 2017ś2037
Peter Harrop IDTechEx Ltd. This presentation shares research in IDTechEx report, “Airborne Wind Energy 2017ś2027ž. The primary unful-filled need is continuity of supply of green energy. We advocate a bold approach creating major new markets. For example, a large ship emits NOxand particulates ofmillions of cars: it could be made energy independent. A long life, low cost genset with no battery needed would create a huge market. Both could be achieved with multi-mode harvesting of which AWE is a part.
We need a zero-emission replacement for 600 GW of diesel gensets and power stations. Like them, the re-placement should be demand responsive/ almost always available/ no huge batteries. In this presentation we fo-cus on off-grid 10 kW to 1 MW AWE opportunities - ar-guably as big or bigger than the on-grid and accessible earlier. Continuity of high wind must deliver superior con-tinuity of electricity production. Testing is modest as yet: we simply do not know and underfunding is a threat. Ship power promises few AWE systems yearly: smaller and more difficult than off-grid land power of potentially millions yearly, including microgrids, diesel gensets and charging parked electric buses and trucks in remote
lo-cations. Longer term, Google Makani’s envisioned float-ing chemical factories and servers would boost the ma-rine market as would viability on smaller craft. All need to be leveraged with new photovoltaics. There is scope for leveraging electric sails, solar roads as decking, tribo-electrics and DEG wave power. Being in the most appro-priate regions of the world and able to rise through still air to operate helps: easiest with drones. Several developers have moved to drones: only one has gone the other way. Most admired by developers is Google Makani.
Transportability helps advancing armies, disaster areas and powering the new farm robotics in the fields. Our ini-tial assessment is that largest off-grid accessible market is for groundgen with electricity for lighting, sensors etc produced on-board. Sophisticated autonomy and struc-tural health monitoring are important for continuity and safety. Four AWE developers sell product soon. Based on take-off of other “newž energy, off-grid AWE sales may be three hundred units in 2028, later billions of dollars. Most popular power output may be 10ś100 kW.
