German Consortium Studies High-Altitude Wind Energy

The Germany-based SkySails Power, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, EWE Offshore Service & Solutions and Leibniz University Hannover are developing and testing a fully automated airborne wind energy system.

Funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), the SkyPower100 research project aims to see the development and testing of the system with a nominal output of 100kW by 2020.

The objective of the project is that the system works autonomously and starts, lands and stows the kite by itself, which will be tested for several months.

During this pilot operation, the consortium partners intend to gain insights into the scaling of high-altitude wind power technology into the megawatt-class onshore and wish to further improve the efficiency and reliability of the technology for future offshore use.

Flying systems such as kites can harness renewable power in higher air layers where higher energy and more stable wind speeds prevail, meaning that high-altitude wind technology could become a pioneering supplement to conventional wind energy use, SkySails said.

SkySails coordinates the project, contributes the know-how and operational experience in the field of automated kite systems, and takes care of the development, production, installation and testing of the pilot system.

EWE is in charge of the site search, project planning, approval, development, foundation and the grid connection of the demonstrator, with EnBW investigating the potential for high-altitude wind in the target markets and the respective approval situation in the project. The Institute of Propulsion Systems and Power Electronics of the Leibniz University Hannover is responsible for the design and investigation of the powertrain.