SRIRAM ENGINEERING COLLEGE TAMIL NADU, INDIA.

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering

KITEGEN: A REVOLUTION IN WIND ENERGY GENERATION.

PRESENTED BY R.Ram Kumar M.Balasubramani

rrk2418ss@gmail.com

satish1493@gmail.com

9790112657 8098525799

ABSTRACT
Wind is rapidly becoming an important renewable energy source as the worry about declining fossil fuel reserves and the global warming associated with their use continues to grow. This paper presents a new class of wind energy generators, denoted as KITEGEN, which employ power kites to capture high altitude wind power. A relatively new idea for wind power generation that can overcome many of

these shortcomings uses large kites to extract power from high-altitude winds. In this scheme, very large and relatively inexpensive kites are tethered to ground-based generators. Due to high altitude force of wind, the power kites starts to fly upto the maximum height. Kites will move correctly if it has the AERODYNAMICFORCES.(i.e. This can be achieved simply by altering the angle between the kite and the wind in order to make the lift force).By the action of power

kites, the lines connected from the kite to rotor generator makes to rotate the rotor and so ELECTRICITY is generated. While comparing to all power generating techniques, kitegen produces the large amount of energy with minimum cost. Small space is enough for the construction of kitegen. The performance of the KITEGEN is controlled by using KSU[KITEGEN STEERING UNIT].KSU is very important to make aerodynamic forces to act on kite, which makes it to fly.

FUTURE SCENARIOS. CONCLUSION.

AIM:
The Ultimate Aim of this paper is to generate electric power with low cost, minimum area, less energy loss, high efficiency by using power kites. Kite Gen is pioneering a revolution on how to produce clean energy from wind, with the aim not only to compete within the current wind industry but, as still too rarely happens with renewable sources, to move the battlefield into the territory of fossil fuels.

INTRODUCTION:
This paper deals with the following topics: INTRODUCTION. NECESSITY FOR CHANGE OVER The problems posed by electric energy generation from fossil sources include high costs due to large demand and limited resources, pollution and CO2 production, and the geopolitics of producer countries. These problems can be overcome by alternative sources that are renewable, cheap, easily available, and sustainable. However, current renewable technologies have limitations. Indeed, even the most optimistic forecast on the diffusion of wind, photovoltaic, and biomass sources estimates no more than a 20% contribution to total energy production within the next1520 years. Excluding hydropower plants, wind turbines are currently the largest source of renewable energy [1]. Unfortunately, wind turbines require heavy towers, foundations, and huge blades, which impact the environment in terms of land usage and noise generated by blade rotation, and require massive investments with long-term amortization. Consequently, electric energy production costs are not yet competitive with thermal generators, despite recent. Wind is rapidly becoming an important renewable energy source as the worry about declining fossil fuel reserves and the global warming associated with their use continues to grow. There has been a great deal of success in generating power from large windmills.

FROM WIND FARMS TO KITEGEN TECHNOLOGY. STRUCTURE OF KITEGEN. Yo-yo configuration Carousel configuration

MECHANISM OF KITEGEN. WINDS OF HIGH ALTITUDE. CONTROL AND STEERING UNIT OF KITEGEN.

KiteGen is a company located near Torino, Italy, that is building kite-powered generators. Kite Gen is pioneering a revolution on how to produce clean energy from wind, with the aim not only to compete within the current wind industry but, as still too rarely happens with renewable sources, to move the battlefield into the territory of fossil fuels. The idea of kitegen is created from seashore game called kite surfing.(as shown in fig.1)

NECESSITY FOR CHANGE OVER FROM WIND FARM TO KITEGEN:

Kitegen have a several number of advantages over wind Farm. wind farms are unable to built over high altitudes. Wind at 800 m is out of the reach of current and future aerogeneratingtowers, already struggling at 100 m.The structure holding up the rotors becomes exponentially heavier, more unstable and expensive. Unfortunately,wind turbines require heavy towers, foundations,and huge blades, which impact the environment in terms of land usage and noise generated by blade rotation, and require massive investments with long-term amortization.Consequently, electric energy production costs are not yet competitive with thermal generators, despite recent increases in oil and gas prices.

FIGURE 1:

Kite surfing. Expert kite-surfers drive kites to obtain energy for propulsion. Control technology can be applied to exploit this technique for electric energy generation.

To reach altitude wind and exploiting its higher kinetic energy, the Kite Gen project starts from a radical change of perspective: no longer heavy and static plants like current wind turbines, but instead light, dynamic and intelligent ones. In the air, to subtract energy from the wind at an altitude of 800 / 1,000 m, power kites, semi-rigid automatically piloted high efficiency air foils. On the ground, all the heavy machinery for power generation. To connect the two systems, high resistance lines transmitting the traction of the kites and at the same time controlling their direction and angle to the wind. A clear advantage of this technology is visually suggested in the illustration below. The essence of the Kite Gen concept is comparable with a wind turbine, whose most efficient part are the wing tips in red where the highest speeds are reached; but only the truly needed components remain, high speed wings and the generator, the latter conveniently moved to the ground. The resulting structure, base foundation included, is much lighter and cheaper. Moreover the operative height can be adjusted according to wind conditions.

FIGURE 2: DISADVANTAGE OF WIND TOWER

The solution to overcome this problem we implement the kitegen idea.Solution: A radical shift of perspective: no

longer heavy and static structures, but a light, dynamic and intelligent machine. In wind towers, the outermost 20%of the blades contributes for 80%of the power.

FIGURE 3:Comparison between wind turbines and airfoils in energy production. In wind towers, limited blade portions (red) contribute predominantly to power production. In KiteGen, the kite acts as the most active portions of the blades, without the need for mechanical support of the less active portions and the tower.

The kite acts as the outermost part of the blades without requiring the heavy tower. Energy generation with controlled power kites can represent a quantum leap in wind power technology, promising to obtain renewable energy from a source largely available almost everywhere, with production costs lower than those of fossil sources. According to our simulation results, it is estimated that the required land usage for a kite generator may be lower than a current wind farm of the same power by a factor of up to 3050, with electric energy production costs lower by a factor up to 1020. Such potential improvement over current wind technology is due to several aerodynamic and mechanical reasons. For example, 90% of the power generated by a 2-MW threeblade turbine with a 90-m rotor diameter is contributed by only the outer 40% of the blade area, corresponding to about 120 m2. This dependence is due to the fact that the aerodynamic forces on each infinitesimal section of the blades are proportional to the square of its speed with respect to the air, and this speed increases toward the tip of the blades. In KiteGen, the tethered airfoils act as the outer portions of the blades, without the need for mechanical support of the tower and of the less-productive inner blade portions. Indeed, a mean generated power of 620 kW is obtained in the

simulation reported in Figure 16 for a single kite of 100-m2 area and 300-m line length.Figure 5,shows that the torque exerted by wind forces at the base of a wind turbines support structure increases with the height of the tower, the force is independent of the line length in KiteGen. Due to structural and economical limits, it is not convenient to go beyond the 100120 m height of the largest turbines commercially available. In contrast, airfoils can fly at altitudes up to several hundred meters, taking advantage of the fact that, as altitude over the ground increases,the wind is faster and less variable;For example,at 800 m the mean wind speed doubles with respect to 100m (the altitude at which the largest wind turbines operate).Since the power that can be extracted from wind grows with the cube of the wind speed, the possibility of reaching such heights represents a further significant advantage of KiteGen. The carousel configuration is scalable up to several hundred megawatts, leading to increasing advantages over current wind farms. Using data from the Danish Wind Industry Association Web site, it follows that,for a site such as Brindisi, in the south of Italy, a 2-MW wind turbine has a mean production of 4000 MWh/year. To attain a mean generation of 9 TWh/year, which corresponds to almost 1000MW mean power, 2250 such towers are required, with a land usage of 300 km2 and an energy production cost of about 100120 /MWh. In comparison, the production cost from fossil sources (gas, oil) is about 6070 /MWh. Kite-powered generators have many advantages over windmill generators, assuming the same power can be produced. First, the actual generator is located on the ground instead of on top of an 80 meter tower, greatly simplifying engineering and reducing costs. Second, the expensive and large rotor blades are replaced by a relatively inexpensive kite and set of lines. Third, the amount of land required by the kite generators is can be as much as 9 times less than the land required by a windmill farm producing the same amount of energy. Kites have the potential to harness wind at much higher altitudes than windmills, giving access to stronger and more consistent winds. Kite generators also have greater ease of scalability as bigger generators can be built, and more kites can be added in carousel configuration, but stability and manufacturing difficulties limit the size of windmills. Furthermore, damage to a kite or lines is less costly than repairing windmill blades, and kites could be actively controlled to avoid planes and even wildlife. Besides being a proven and more mature technology, windmills do not have any major advantages over kite-powered generators. If the predictions by KiteGen and other companies about the

potential of kite power are close to accurate, they will likely have a large impact upon wind power.

STRUCTURE OF KITEGEN:
The vertical axis orientation of the rotation is intended to eliminate the static and dynamic problems that prevent the increase in size of conventional wind turbines.The problem of "capturing" the wind is solved by the use of (Power kites) whose movements are controlled automatically by a computer. Through cables the kites are anchored to a structure that rotates, generating electricity. This structure is the turbine of the high altitude wind farm while the kites are the "blades" of the turbine. The kites are flown on a predetermined trajectory, that can transform the exerted force on the cable, to an overall mechanical torque which rotates the vertical axis turbine.

CAROUSEL CONFIGURATION:
About twenty automatically controlled kites can keep rotating a turbine of 1,600 meters diameter at a speed of 15 revolutions per hour. This can generate 1 Gigawatt of power, equivalent to a medium size nuclear power station but with an estimated capital cost 10 times lower. In other words 1 cubic Km of sky is able to provide 1 GigaWatt of power for 80% of the time in a year. The kites extra added benefit lies in the fact that the length of cables allows them to reach heights over 500 meters, where the high altitude wind flows, without introducing structural weaknesses. Simulations published by KiteGen, estimate that they can achieve 793 kW average power generation with a kite that is 100 m2 in size using an altitude-varying windspeed between 8 m/s at ground level and 24 m/s at 800 m. [5] By scaling up the size of the kite to 500 m2, 2 MW can be generated at 9 m/s constant windspeed, and much more power at higher windspeeds.

FIGURE 4 KiteGen carousel configuration concept. Several airfoils are controlled by the kite steering units placed on the arms of a vertical axis rotor. The airfoils flight is controlled so as to turn the rotor, which transmits its motion to an electric generator.

In another design, called carousel configuration, they predict that a plant could generate up to 1000 MW mean power with 12 m/s winds and 100 kites that are each 500 m 2 in size. In actual prototype tests with small kites, KiteGen was able to generate positive net energy using small kites controlled by humans. More importantly, the power generated matched well to the power predicted by their model, suggesting that their model also provides a good estimate for higher-power generators.

YO-YO CONFIGURATION:
Individual yo-yo configuration generators would be less expensive and lighter than existing windmills since a kite and tether lines weighing about 3 tons altogether would replace the tower and rotor which weigh about 200-300 tons together (the same generator is assumed in both cases). Furthermore, windmills need to be spatially separated in order to achieve maximum performance, while kite-powered generators would extract power from the same amount of air volume with a significantly reduced footprint on the ground. KiteGen predicts they can achieve energy costs of $0.02-$0.05 per kWh, as compared to $0.05-$0.09 per kWh for fossil energy and $0.15 per kWh for current windmills.In order to trust these numbers from KiteGen, it is necessary to look deeper into the assumptions they make. The most important of these is that sufficient wind is available, followed by the assumption that enough power can be generated by the kite and that this power can be transmitted to the ground. Next, that the kites can be sufficiently

controlled, and finally, that these generators would have reduced costs compared to other types of generators.

controller of each kite is designed to maximize the torque exerted on the rotor, which transmits its motion to an electric generator. For a given wind direction, each airfoil can produce energy for about 300 of carousel rotation; only a small fraction about 1%,of the generated energy is used to drag the kite against the wind for the remaining 60.

WINDS OF HIGH ALTITUDE:

There are two wind flow bands that envelope the Earth globe. One passes over the southern hemisphere at the latitude of Pataganio, while the other passes over the northern hemisphere, over Europe. The flow height ranges from 800 meters up to 10,000 meters of altitude, while the width is 4,000 or 5,000 km. The average power of the wind is about 2 kW per square meter. High altitude wind is much more powerful and constant when compared to that at earth level, which is intense in very few places, and at full speed for only about 1,700-1,800 hours per year, which limits the annual production of energy. The wind which is planned to be used is around 800 meters height with average speeds of 7 m/s and specific power of 200 W/m . For example, a section of wind width of 1,000 meters at an altitude between 600 and 1,000 meters has a power equal to 400*1000*200 = 80 MW. The prototype in the Province of Asti which works with 9 generators and up to 10,000m generates a peak power of 27 MW. A park of Kitegens with 100 MW peak power should produce500 GWh/year; enough for 86,000 household.The Kitegen can generate about 6000 hours / year.

FIGURE 5: KiteGen small-scale prototype of a yo-yo configuration.The kite lines are linked to two electric drives. The flight of the kite is controlled by regulating the pulling force on each line, and energy is generated as the kite unrolls the lines.

MECHANISM OF KITEGEN:
The two kite lines are rolled around two drums and linked to two electric drives,which are fixed to the ground. The flight of the kite is controlled by regulating the pulling force on each line. Energy is collected when the wind force on the kite unrolls the lines, and the electric drives act as generators due to the rotation of the drums. When the maximal line length of about 300 m is reached, the drives act as motors to recover the kite, spending a small percentage (about 12%, see the Simulation Results section for details) of the previously generated energy . This yo-yo configuration is under the control of the kite steering unit (KSU, see ), which includes the electric drives (for a total power of 40 kW), the drums, and all of the hardware needed to control a single kite. The aims of the prototype are to demonstrate the ability to control the flight of a single kite, to produce a significant amount of energy, and to verify the energy production levels predicted in simulation studies.The potential of a similar yo-yo configuration is investigated,by means of simulation results, in and for one or more kites linked to a single cable. In and , it is assumed that the angle of incidence of the kites can be controlled. Thus, the control inputs are not only the roll angle and the cable winding speed, as considered in and in this article, but also the lift coefficient CL. For medium-to-large-scale energy generators, an alternative KiteGen configuration is being studied, namely, the carousel configuration. In this configuration, introduced in and shown in Figure 4, several airfoils are controlled by their KSUs placed on the arms of a vertical-axis rotor. The

FIGURE 6 :Wind-speed variation as a function of altitude. These data are based on the average European wind speed of 3 m/s at ground level.

CONTROL AND STEERING UNIT OF KITEGEN:

The KSU (Kite Steering Unit) is the unit that allows to automatically pilot a power kite or an array of power kites over a predefined flight path (see prototype video). The power kite is manouvered by differentially unrolling and recovering the two lines on two winches controlled by engines. Each Kite Gen power plant is composed by several KSUs pulled by the power kites along a ring-shape circular path at ground level. At the very core of the project stays the software that, receiving data also from on-board avionic sensors (see sensors video), autonomously pilots the power kites, so that their flight patterns can be controlled, synchronized and normally directed to maximise the production of energy. With such configuration, a single Kite Gen power plant is able to intercept very large amounts of altitude wind. In the illustration below, concerning the Kite Generator in the Carousel configuration, is shown the area swept by a plant with a circular path of 800 m diameter: the same quantity can be reached by approx. 150 latest generation wind turbines. It has to be noted that wind turbines need to be spaced to avoid shading one another and decreasing the total yield, so these would require a territory of more than 40 Km. The Kite Gen power plant, a safe area around included, uses approx. 5 Km. Energy production takes place in a distributed manner at each unit, thus avoiding unmanageable sizes of the electrical equipment.

The modular approach makes possible to build very powerful Kite Gen plants, where as the diameter at ground level of the circular path grows, the area swept increases to the square and therefore the total wind power. 100 MW Kite Gen power plants, not much larger than the illustrated example, diameter at ground level of the circular path of approx. 1,000 m, are estimated to deliver a cost of energy produced lower than 0.03

Euro per kWh. This value is bound to be further enhanced, since 1 000 MW (1 GW) plants are under study (see Future scenarios). In the Stem configuration too is possible to reach big amount of generated power, through wind farm made of several generators, each of them much closer to the other than it is actually possible to traditional wind mills. Good automated control of the kite is extremely critical in order to keep the kites in the sky and generating optimal power. KiteGen presents one model which it uses in the kite simulations presented in Canale et al., but they used a human controller during the actual test flights. However, other groups have successfully demonstrated kite control or have published a number of promising papers on kite control. While difficult, this controls problem does not have any fundamental physical constraints as long as the kites have enough forward velocity to keep moving, and that can be optimized with sufficient research and time. To ensure the kite will keep moving, we need an aerodynamic force in the forward direction of the kite. This can be achieved simply by altering the angle between the kite and the wind in order to make the lift force (normally perpendicular to the effective wind direction) act partially in the forward direction of the kite. This results in more forward acceleration with less force on the lines, and so there is a tradeoff between keeping the kite flying, and producing power. If we use the same aerodynamic equations as Canale et al., we see that this force in the forward direction depends greatly upon the angle of attack, positive for some angles and negative for others.However, an average force of zero is all that is necessary to keep the kite flying, so the angle can be controlled to ensure there is enough forward momentum. This indicates the importance of the control algorithms for flying the kites, which is a major area of research. Due to the successful tests and simulations by KiteGen, we can assume that enough forward velocity can be obtained. The KiteGen project has designed and simulated a smallscale prototype. The two kite lines are rolled around two drums and linked to two electric drives, which are fixed to the ground. The flight of the kite is controlled by regulating the pulling force on each line. Energy is collected when the wind force on the kite unrolls the lines, and the electric drives act as generators due to the rotation of the drums. When the maximal line length of about 300 m is reached, the drives act as motors to recover the kite, spending a small percentage (about 12%, see the Simulation Results section for details) of the previously generated energy . This yo-yo configuration is under the control of the kite steering unit (KSU, see Figure 3), which includes the electric

drives (for a total power of 40 kW), the drums, and all of the hardware needed to control a single kite. The aims of the prototype are to demonstrate the ability to control the flight of a single kite, to produce a significant amount of energy, and to verify the energy production levels predicted in simulation studies.The potential of a similar yo-yo configuration is investigated,by means of simulation results, in and for one or more kites linked to a single cable. In and, it is assumed that the angle of incidence of the kites can be controlled. Thus, the control inputs are not only the roll angle and the cable winding speed, as considered in and in this article, but also the lift coefficient CL. For medium-to-large-scale energy generators, an alternative KiteGen configuration is being studied, namely, the carousel configuration. In this configuration, introduced in figure, several airfoils are controlled by their KSUs placed on the arms of a vertical-axis rotor. The controller of each kite is designed to maximize the torque exerted on the rotor, which transmits its motion to an electric generator. For a given wind direction, each airfoil can produce energy for about 300 of carousel rotation; only a small fraction about 1%,of the generated energy is used to drag the kite against the wind for the remaining 60.According to our simulation results, it is estimated that the required land usage for a kite generator may be lower than a current wind farm of the same power by a factor of up to 3050, with electric energy

blades, without the need for mechanical support of the tower and of the less-productive inner blade portions; see Figure 5. Indeed, a mean generated power of 620 kW is obtained in the simulation reported in Figure 16 for a single kite of 100-m2 area and 300-m line length.Figure shows that the torque exerted by wind forces at the base of a wind turbines support structure increases with which transmits its motion to an electric generator.

CONTROL DESIGN:
The main objective of KiteGen control is to maximize energy generation while preventing the airfoils from falling to the ground or the lines from tangling. The control problem can be expressed in terms of maximizing a cost function that predicts the net energy generation while satisfying constraints on the input and state variables. Nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) is employed to accomplish these objectives,since it aims to optimize a given cost function and fulfil constraints at the same time. However, fast implementation is needed to allow real-time control at the required sampling time, which is on the order of 0.1 s. In particular, the implementation of fast model predictive control (FMPC) based on set membership approximation methodologies.

SENSORS AND SENSOR FUSIONS:

The KiteGen controller is based on feedback of the kite position and speed vector, which must be measured or accurately estimated. Each airfoil is thus equipped with a pair of triaxial accelerometers and a pair fulfilled, the DVS gives the same accuracy as the theoretical minimal variance filter. Moreover, in the presence of modeling errors and nonlinearities, the DVS guarantees stability and performs tradeoffs between optimality and robustness, which are not achievable with EKF.

AERODYNAMIC FORCES:
FIGURE 7: Scheme of the kite steering unit. The kite steering unit, which provides automatic control for KiteGen, includes the electric drives, drums, and all of the hardware needed to control a single kite.

The aerodynamic force _Faer depends on the effective wind speed _We, which in the local system is computed as

production costs lower by a factor up to 1020. Such potential improvement over current wind technology is due to several aerodynamic and mechanical reasons. For example, 90% of the power generated by a 2-MW threeblade turbine with a 90m rotor diameter is contributed by only the outer 40% of the blade area, corresponding to about 120 m2. This dependence is due to the fact that the aerodynamic forces on each infinitesimal section of the blades are proportional to the square of its speed with respect to the air, and this speed increases toward the tip of the blades. In KiteGen, the tethered airfoils act as the outer portions of the

where _Wa is the kite speed with respect to the ground. For both the yo-yo and carousel configurations, _Wa can be expressed as a function of the local coordinate system (, , r) and the position of the KSU with respect to the fixed coordinate system (X,Y, Z). Let us consider now the kite wind coordinate system,with its origin located at the kite center of gravity, the basis vector _xw aligned with the effective wind speed vector, the basis vector _zw contained by the kite longitudinal plane of symmetry and pointing from the top surface of the kite to the bottom, and the basis vector _yw completing a righthanded

system. In the wind coordinate system the aerodynamic force _Faer,w is given by

thus generating energy, and it is negative when the electric generator is acting as a motor to drag the rotor when the kite is not able to generate a pulling force.The torque Tc is set by a local controller to keep the rotor at constant speed _ = _ref.

where FD is the drag force and FL is the lift force, computed as

KITEGEN DYNAMIC DESCRIPTION:

The generic system dynamics are of the form

where x(t) = [(t) (t) r(t) _(t) (t) (t) r(t) _(t)]T are the model states and u(t) = (t) is the control variable. In the case of the yo-yo configuration, _ = _ = _ref = 0. All of the model states are assumed to be measured or estimated for use in feedback control. Mechanical power P generated where is the air density, A is the kite characteristic area,and CL and CD are the kite lift and drag coefficients. All of these variables are assumed to be constant. The aerodynamic force _Faer can then be expressed in the local coordinate system as a nonlinear function of several arguments of the form

The kite roll angle in (12) is the control variable, defined by

FIGURE 8 Forces acting on the kite. The aerodynamic lift and drag forces are FL and FD, respectively, the gravitational force is mg ,and the pulling force Fc is exerted by the lines. The length difference between the lines gives the roll input angle .

w here d is the kite width and _l is the length difference between the two lines (see Figure 8). The roll angle influences the kite motion by changing the direction of _Faer.

LINE FORCES:
Concerning the effect of the lines, the force Fc is always directed along the local unit vector er and cannot be negative, since the kite can only pull the lines.Moreover, Fc is measured by a force transducer on the KSU, and, through
control of the electric drives, it is regulated so that the line speed satisfies r(t) rref(t), where rref(t) is chosen. In the case of the yoyo configuration, Fc(t) = Fc(, , r, , , r, rref, _We), while, for the carousel configuration, Fc(t) = Fc(, , r,_, , , r, _, rref, _We).

MOTOR DYNAMICS:
In the case of the carousel configuration, the motion law for the generator rotor is taken into account by the equation. where Jz is the rotor moment of inertia and Tc is the torque of the electric generator/motor linked to the rotor. Viscous terms are neglected in (14) since the rotor speed _ is kept low as shown in the Simulation Results section. Tc is positive when the kite is pulling the rotor with increasing values of _,

FIGURE 9: Yo-yo configuration phases. The kite steering unit acts on the kite lines in such a way that energy is generated in the traction phase (green) and spent in the passive phase (red). Each cycle begins when the proper starting conditions (circled in blue) are satisfied. In this simulation the effects of turbulence are neglected.

with KiteGen is the sum of the power generated by unrolling the lines and the power generated by the rotor movement, that is,Both terms in (16) can be negative when the kite lines are being recovered in the yo-yo configuration or the rotor is being dragged against the wind in the carousel configuration.For the yo-yo configuration the term _ Tc is zero, and thus the generated mechanical energy is due only to line unrolling.Note that (16) is related to a carousel with a single KSU.When more kites are linked to the same carousel, the effect of line rolling/unrolling for each kite must be included.

the rotor arm reaches the angular position _0, and lasts until the rotation angle _3 is reached. To maneuver the kite to a suitable position to begin the traction phase (highlighted in blue), the passive phase is divided into 3 subphases (gray orange, and green) delimited by rotation angles _1 and _2. (b) Kite trajectory with carousel configuration.The kite follows figure-eight orbits, which maximize its speed during the traction phase (green), while during the passive phase (red) the airfoil speed is very low to reduce drag forces. The kite steering unit follows a circular trajectory at ground height, with radius R..

When the traction phase starts, the kite flies as line length r increases due to a positive value rref of the line.

Yo-Yo CONFIGURATION CONTROLLER:

The traction phase begins when the kite is flying in a prescribed zone downwind of the KSU, at a suitable altitude ZI with a given line length r.

FIGURE 11: Simulation results for the yo-yo configuration. Kite trajectories are reported during the traction (green) and passive (red) phases of a complete yo-yo configuration cycle in the presence of wind turbulence. Note that the behavior is similar to Figure despite the turbulence.

FIGURE 10:(a) Carousel configuration phases. The same rotor arm is depicted with three subsequent angular values. The pasive phase starts when

passive phase is divided into three subphases. In the first subphase, the line speed r(t) is controlled to smoothly decrease toward zero. The control objective is to move the kite into a zone with low values of and high values of || (see Figure 7), where the effective wind speed _We and force Fc are low and the kite can be recovered with low energy expense. Then, in the second subphase, r(t) is controlled to smoothly decrease from zero to a negative value, which provides a compromise between high rewinding speed and low force Fc. During this passive subphase, the control objective is to minimize the energy spent to rewind the lines. This second subphase ends when the line length r reaches the desired minimum value.In the third passive subphase, r(t) is controlled to smoothly increase toward zero from the previous negative setpoint.The control objective is to move the kite in the traction phase starting zone. The passive phase ends when the starting conditions for the traction phase are reached.

FIGURE 12: Simulated power obtained with the yo-yo configuration. A complete cycle is considered in the presence of wind turbulence.The instantaneous course of the generated power during the traction phase (green) is reported together with the power spent for the kite recovery in the passive phase (red). The mean value of the power generated during the cycle, which is represented by a dashed line, is 11.8 kW. The corresponding generated energy is 2613 kJ per cycle.

CAROUSEL CONFIGURATION CONTROLLER:

In the carousel configuration ,the torque Tc given by the carousel motor/generator is such that the rotor moves at the constant reference angular speed _ref, which is chosen to optimize the net energy generated in the cycle. Since the angular speed is constant, each kite can be controlled independently, provided that the lines never collide. Thus, a single kite is considered in the following. The traction phase begins at the rotor angular position _ = _3, where the nominal wind direction is such that the kite can pull the rotor arm [see Figure 10(a)]. A suitable trajectory for the line speed r during the traction phase is set to further increase generated power. Recalling that mechanical power obtained at each instant is the sum of the effects given by line unrolling and rotor movement, MPC minimizes the cost function

speed reference provided by the local motor controller. Since a traction force Fc is created on the kite lines, the system generates mechanical power. The predictive control law computes the line angle (see Figure)in order to vary Fc and thus optimize the aerodynamic behavior of the kite for energy generation. The line angle is obtained by varying _l according to (13) by imposing a setpoint on the desired line length achieved by the local motor controller. The value of the reference line speed rref is chosen as a compromise between obtaining high traction force action and high line winding speed. Basically, the stronger the wind, the higher the value of rref that can be set while obtaining high force values. The control system objective in the traction phase is to maximize the energy generated during the prediction interval [tk, tk + TP]. Since the instantaneous generated mechanical power is P(t) = r(t)Fc(t), MPC minimizes the cost function.

The traction phase ends when the length of the lines reaches a given value r and the passive phase begins. The

FIGURE 13: Line speed reference imposed during a complete carousel cycle. The commanded line speed r (t) is chosen on the basis of simulation data to increase the mean generated power and to ensure that the lengths of the lines at the beginning of each cycle are the same.

When the rotor arm reaches the angle _0, the kite can no longer pull the carousel, and the traction phase ends. Then, the passive phase starts, and the electric generator linked to the rotor acts as a motor to drag the carousel between angles _0 and _3. Meanwhile, the kite is moved to a suitable position for initiating the next traction phase.

Yo-Yo CONFIGURATION:
For simulation, we consider a yo-yo configuration similar to the physical prototype. The numerical values of the kite model and control parameters are reported in Table 1, while Table 2 contains the state values for the start and end conditions of each phase as well as the values of the state and input constraints. Figure shows the trajectory of the kite, while the power generated during the cycle is reported in Figure 12. The mean power is 11.8 kW, which corresponds to energy generation of 2613 kJ per cycle.

CAROUSEL CONFIGURATION:
FIGURE 14: Figure-eight kite orbits during the traction phase for the carousel configuration. Such orbits are imposed by means of suitable constraints on the angles and to avoid line wrapping

FIGURE 15: Power generated with the carousel configuration. Two complete cycles are considered in the presence of wind turbulence. The instantaneous course of the generated power during the traction phases (green) is reported together with the power required for the kite recovery in the passive phases (red). Note the nearly null values of energy usage during the passive phases. The mean value of the power generated during the two cycles is 621 kW and is represented by a ashed line. The corresponding generated energy is 234 MJ per cycle.

A carousel with a single KSU is considered. The model and control parameters employed are reported in Table 3, while Table 4 contains the start and end conditions for each phase, as well as the values of the state and input constraints. The line speed during the cycle is reported in Figure. This reference trajectory is chosen on the basis of the previous simulation to maximize the mean generated power and to ensure that the length of the lines at the beginning of each cycle is the same. Figure shows the trajectories of the kite and the control unit during two full cycles in the presence of random wind disturbances. Figure depicts some orbits traced by the kite during the traction phase, while the power generated during the two cycles is reported in Figure. The mean power is 621 kW, and the generated energy is 234 MJ per cycle. Figure 17 depicts the course of the effective wind speed | _W e| (see the section Kite Generator Models for details). It can be noted that during the traction phase the mean effective wind speed is about 14 times greater than the tangential speed of the rotor connected to the generator, which is 18 km/h. Since the fixed coordinate system (X,Y, Z) is defined on the basis of the nominal wind direction, a measurable change of the latter can be overcome by rotating the whole coordinate system (X,Y, Z), thus obtaining the same performance without changing either the control system parameters or the starting conditions of the various phases.

because of the surface spacing needed to maintain a sufficent efficiency. Kite Gen power plants overcome this limit, each unit exploiting different regions of the huge volume of wind swept by the whole machine. It has to be added that, in scaling up the dimensions of the plant, one key technology that Kite Gen Research plans to explore is the conversion of mechanical energy into electrical energy through linear magnetic engines in a reversible fashion.The theoretical boundaries of such configuration appears to be a ring of approx. 25 km diameter, very similar to a railway bridge, which is the base, or technically the stator, on which rotates a mag lev Kite Gen; the tethered high power kites fly automatically at up to 10 km height in a controlled formation, generating a power of more than 60 GW. Right now, however, is deemed that opportunity evaluations will probably suggest to consider power plants of smaller dimensions.

CONCLUSION:
According to the calculations above, the predictions published by KiteGen appear quite optimistic, but perhaps not unrealistic. Significant improvement seems to be achieved by going to 400 m altitude, but the real potential for consistent and powerful wind lies at an even higher altitude. The drag and weight of lines will play an even more important role at this height, and so more detailed studies will need to be performed. However, the kites are able to extract sufficient power from the wind, and control systems are already effective enough to keep a kite flying. Also, Kite systems have the potential to be competitively inexpensive, and to be more scalable than current windmills. Wind intermittency will still be a very large problem, and so wind power will need to be coupled with more consistent power plants unless the current technology for energy storage is greatly improved. In conclusion, While kitepowered generators will likely not replace traditional power plants immediately, they have a lot of potential to start replacing windmill farms in the near future.

FIGURE 16: Simulated effective wind speed for the carousel configuration. The course of | _We| during the traction subphases (green) and the passive subphases (red) is related to two complete carousel cycles. The average values are 250 km/h during the traction phase and 85 km/h during the passive phase.

FUTURE SCENARIO:
Given a fixed optimal aspect ratio of the plant, as the diameter of the circular path at ground level grows, the area swept by the power kites increases to the square, reaching also higher and more powerful winds. Such exponential growth of the total wind power that can be harnessed is the main reason behind building bigger Kite Gen power plants.And due to the inner modularity of the technology, that foresees the multiplication of single steering units producing energy on a larger circular path, the scalability of the Kite Gen power plants comes without significant structural and cost constraints. In a way, the difficulty in growing the size of a plant can be compared to what it takes, having built an automobile, to build a long line of the same automobiles.This is the reason why 1 000 MW (1 GW) and larger Kite Gen plants are studied, where the aim is not just increasingly cheaper cost of energy produced, but providing a solution to effectively reach (a not only dream of) a global energy mix where a consistent part of the baseload comes from clean, renewable source: tropospheric wind. It would be like installing thousands of current wind turbines into the same site, something impossible