We may be inching closer to a post-turbine wind energy future if a grant awarded to a University of Bristol boffin for wind-harvesting, ground-tethered drone research is any indication of things to come.£375,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council recently for his work into airborne wind energy systems , which he hopes will move the emerging concept into the commercial market.
In all three cases, the advantage is that AWES can be sent far higher into the sky than a ground-based turbine, allowing them to catch higher winds and generate energy more quickly. Because the footprint of an AWES system – regardless of the type – is quite small, they're also portable and deployable in remote locations. The drones' flying patterns are generally autonomous as well so they can typically stay aloft on their own for several days with monitoring.
"I aim to use bifurcation and continuation to better predict the flying characteristics of these drones, thereby preventing them from crashing and improving efficiency," Nguyen told."These techniques will not replace anything at the planning stage, but will complement existing test flights and improve the design of flight control systems."of the first type mentioned – the passive drone that generates energy by pulling against its tether.
"Results from my project will be compared against existing flight test data from Kitemill to see if any undesirable flying characteristic predicted by bifurcation/continuation is reflected in real life," Nguyen told us.