Kite wind turbine electric generator

Hi. New to the newsgroup, I work in the windpower industry. I am investigating some plans to build a small wind turbine without a tower; i.e. a kite wind turbine. A year ago or so I saw a discussion here or on another list about previous studies on the subject. I'd be happy to hear what folks on this list know or to get leads to previous projects or studies.

Many thanks, Eric

I have zero experience of actually doing this ( though I do seem to recall hearing of one guy who's using a car dynamo for this ), but I can't really see it as a practical proposition for power generation for more than a few hours at a time.

I suspect that to get any appreciable amount of power out of a spinsock, you're gonna need a very serious lifter kite ( because I think you're going to have to lift the generator, or at least some sort of flexible linkage system, aswell as the sock itself ) not to mention a very serious spinsock.

Size is not a technical problem in and of itself ( it may be an aesthetic problem for those who have to look at it ), but wind range certainly is. Assuming you engineer this critter to take any wind it's likely to see in 100 years, it'll get heavier. Which makes it more likely that the wind will drop below its minimum.

You're gonna need to recruit, and maintain on standby, a 'launch' team to recover and relaunch the thing when the wind does drop, unless you're thinking of some sort of automatic system, in which case the complexity and risk ( in the 'meeting design objectives' sense as opposed to the 'personal injury' sense ) in your design has just increased by a factor of 10 ( or more ).

MdeR.

Hi Roy, If you want to fly at night why not turn the above question around abit, 'electric wind turbine to generate lift for kite' Just take a heap of car batteries, a starter motor, a prop and stick it all

Look on patents.ibm.com. I was looking at kite designs and I remember seeing a contraption like this.

<a target='_blank' rel=nofollow target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href='http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US04486669