Crosswind kite power
Types of crosswind kite power devices are also distinguished by scale, purpose, intended life, and cost level.
The rotor of the electrical generator is brought in motion by the carousel, the axle of the car, or the screw of the ship, correspondingly.
The relative airflow rotates the blades by way of autorotation, an interaction with the wind, which transfer the power to the generators.
[9][10][11] Several research centres are exploring twin wing sets employing tether pulling of upwind ground-based loads where the cross winding wing sets use lighter-than-air devices to assure flight in case of lulls in the ambient wind.
[12] Many in-public-domain patent disclosed teachings and some current research centres are with a focus on using LTA kites to hold bladed turbines using autorotation to drive flown generators.
Jerking tether lines by the kite-flown fluttering elements to drive loads to make electricity has been done and is being explored.
The movement of objects may be done for various reasons: recreation, sport, commerce, industry, science, travel, mine-clearing, defence, offense, plowing, landscaping, etc.
In this type of CWKPS the fast-motion of the flying blades or wings harvest the wind's energy to power the lifting capacity of the system.
Lift-and-place or lift-and-drop uses occur in this type; mass loads are lifted and then placed or dropped; this is done sometimes to overcome barriers or to save ground-transportation fuel costs.
Human control exercised during the full flight session is used in crosswind stunt kiting and kiteboarding; the same has been in place for some electricity-producing crosswind-kite-power source, e.g., by Pierre Benhaiem of France.
When the crosswind-kite-power source becomes too large to handle, human-assisted devices or fully autonomous robotic control systems can be implemented.
Fully passive crosswind-kite-power sources have been demonstrated, using the natural frequencies of a system to permit the absence of human or robot controls; a kited wing tossing back and forth in constant motion is a primitive passively controlled crosswind-kite-power source.
Advances in computers, sensors, kite steering units, and servo-mechanisms are being applied to attain full autonomy of the launching, flying, and landing of crosswind-kite-power source that are aiming for the utility-scale energy-production market.
Some sectors of crosswind kite power are already commercially robust; the sport low altitude traction industry is one of those sectors; toy sport crosswind kite power systems kept at low altitude must remain safe.
[26] In the early 1800s George Pocock used control of kite system wings to crosswind to good effect.
In the early 1900s Paul Garber produced high speed wings by two-line controls to give targets for aircraft gunners.
With the advance of computational and sensory resources fine control of the wings of a kite system became not only affordable, but cheap.
In the same time significant progress was made in the materials and wing construction techniques; new types of flexible kites with good L/D ratio have been invented.
Objectives for the future discussed in the literature regard CWKPS facing toy, sport, industry, science, commerce, energy for electrical grid, sailing, and a host of other tasking applications.
Placing wing elements that fly to crosswind on huge lofted rope-based arches or even net domes is being researched.
Serious sport crosswind kite power systems drive the movement of athletes around race courses in local and national competitions.
[33] Notice that some CWKPS, such as Jalbert parafoil working in figure-8 patterns to turn a ground-stationed generator, could be commissioned to operate fully without flying to crosswind, and the resultant kite-power system would then be a DWKPS.
A non-CWPKS is historically illustrated by a kite-power harvesting system such as was used by Samuel Franklin Cody for man-lifting with the involved wings set in stable downwind flight without flying to crosswind.
