Development of Safe and Efficient Operation for an Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) System - A Rotary Design

This report details the work that has been done in the 2nd year of a 3 year research PhD. A brief background into the motivation behind this work is given along with an introduction to Airborne Wind Energy. The novelty of this work is described and the aims and objectives of this research are set out. A short literature review is then given highlighting the prior research on the modelling of airborne wind energy systems with a particular focus on rotary system. Following this rotary systems are defined and the existing prototypes are introduced. A test campaign run on the Daisy Kite design is then described with the results collected so far shown. Finally a mathematical model is introduced. The model is used to simulate the Daisy Kite and its results are compared to the experimental data collected during the test campaign. It is shown the model is able to accurately predicted the Daisy Kites power output. This report is concluded by highlighting the future work that will initially focus on the development of a dynamic model of the tensile rotary power transmission used within the Daisy Kite.