The Sea-Air-Farm Project

Bernard van Hemert Project Manager Ampyx Power B.V. Lulofsstraat 55 ś Unit 13 2521 AL The Hague The Netherlands bernard@ampyxpower.com www.ampyxpower.com

The Sea-Air-Farm Project

Ampyx Power B.V. Ampyx Power is developing an alternative for wind

tur-bine generators, an Airborne Wind Energy System. An au-tonomous aircraft fixed to a tether follows an optimized flight pattern. During reel-out, the tether pulls with very high tension on a winch, which in turn drives the genera-tor. When the tether is completely reeled-out, the plane dives back towards the platform and the tether is reeled-in at very low tension. This system has been developed on multiple 20 kW prototypes; currently, a 200 kW proto-type is being built, while the upscaling to a 2 MW model is ongoing. This system will generate a similar amount of energy to a conventional wind turbine, but with much less materials. This is partly because it operates at much higher altitudes -with more winds-, and partly because it flies at much higher speeds than the spinning blades of a wind turbine.

On the short term, Ampyx Power intends to deploy this technology on land, and to replace the first genera-tion offshore WTGs that have been installed in Europe since 2000. However, on the long term, we foresee an enormous potential in the floating offshore wind mar-ket, where the advantages of the AWES system over traditional wind turbines (low weight, minimal founda-tion loads) have even more weight than for the case for bottom-fixed foundations.

Ampyx Power built a consortium to implement a full fledged feasibility study, and obtained subsidy from the

Netherlands Enterprise Agency [1].

• Ampyx Power investigated the upscale from 3 to AP-4 (2 MW)

• Mocean Offshore designed a dedicated floater with mooring and innovative cable hang-off

• Marin tested the floater in their test basin, after which the Mocean design was further refined

• Independent Energy expert ECN validated Ampyx Power’s yield models, developed a wake model and calculated the annual energy output

• Based on the knowledge available, all parties con-tributed to the design of a conceptual offshore wind-farm and its installation and O&M strategies. • An overview of the relevant certification and

consent-ing regulations and bodies is made.

• Based on the above, ECN estimated the resulting LCoE, making use of their dedicated cost models.

While the final reporting is expected by December 2017, we will already be able to share in our presentation the re-sults of all work packages as described above.References: [1] Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO): "Exploratory Research and LCoE of Airborne Offshore Wind Farm". Project no. TEWZ116048.

https://www.rvo.nl/subsidies-regelingen/projecten/exploratory-research-and-lcoe-airborne-offshore-wind-farm