Kitepower - Commercializing a 100 kW Mobile Wind Energy System

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REACH project team in Delft (13 December 2016)

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100 kW ground station of Kitepower B.V. in operation at testcenter Valkenburg (24 July 2017)

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Johannes Peschel

Founder & CEO Kitepower B.V. Kluyverweg 1 2629 HS Delft Netherlands j.peschel@kitepower.nl www.kitepower.nl

Kitepower ś Commercializing a 100 kW Mobile Wind Energy System

Johannes Peschel1, Joep Breuer1, Roland Schmehl2

1_{Kitepower B.V.}

2_{Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology}

At Kitepower, we focus on commercializing mobile 100 kW Kitepower systems that are suitable for temporary op-eration and installation in remote locations. Kitepower is a spin-off from the research group at TU Delft first established by Wubbo Ockels and now at the core of REACH, a e3.7 million EU H2020 FTI program [1]. Within this project, Kitepower integrates almost 20 years of aca-demic knowledge in high altitude wind energy from the TU Delft with hardware from experienced industrial part-ners. We pair the agility and the drive of a startup com-pany with the knowledge of a top research institute ś TU Delft ś and in a next step combine it with the production capabilities and expertise of the established companies Maxon Motor, Dromec and Genetrix.

Kitepower itself is responsible for the commercialization, the overall system architecture, design, simulation and the control software. We improved our 20 kW prototype and developed the ’Model A’ of our 100 kW product with a peak power of 180 kW. We believe that we are the first to have a mobile wind energy system of this size oper-ational. Besides numerous flight hours, we already had several night flights. With our new Kite Control Unit (KCU) which is no longer dependent on battery power, we are moving towards two months of operation until the end of the year. The major advantage of our system lies in the fact that we use a KCU and a soft kite. These are simple components that are very robust, easy to control, have a low weight as well as low costs and are easy to manufac-ture and to replace. Although the soft kite inherently has a lower aerodynamic performance, we believe that its

simplicity and robustness fits perfectly with the off-grid market. We are currently working on a new wing design with improved aerodynamics and structure to make a high efficiency, high wing loading soft kite possible. The 100 kW product is based on a 20 ft container and a 50ś80 m2_{kite. The system is marketed as an add-on for diesel} generators in order to save on diesel costs in remote lo-cations. It is estimated that the system can save up to 150000 L of diesel ś 400 t of CO2ś per year under ap-propriate wind conditions. We are running multiple pilot systems until our final product is ready by the end of 2018.

Kitepower žModel Až ground station with 180 kW peak power

References:

[1] EC Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS): REACH Report Summary, 15 May 2017.

http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/198196_en.html