Scalability and compatibility analyses of airborne wind technology for maritime transport

Abstract

Wind energy is a source freely available in the oceans. New developments in the wind industry are towards high altitude wind turbines, known as Airborne Wind Energy Systems. The airborne wind technology is rapidly developing with several different design concepts, e.g. Skysail, Makani, KiteMill. There are mainly two types of airborne wind technology: propulsion-supporting and electricity-generating. Electricity generating airborne technology is mainly used for land-based buildings and fixed offshore structures and with small-scale airborne turbines. Thus, the applications of this technology in the maritime industry are limited to ship propulsion-support only and no scalable airborne wind turbine is used on board of a vessel. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore the application of electricity-generating airborne turbines on the board of a ship. The exploration is mainly to determine how scalable these turbines shall be to satisfy a ship's electricity needs and how compatible the design of these turbines can be with the ships design. . Therefore, a scalability analysis based on crosswind kite power model is applied to determine the technical requirements to scale up the existing airborne turbine to meet the electricity demand of a ship. Moreover, a compatibility analysis is applied to determine the technical interfaces and constrains between the airborne turbine configuration and the ship architecture. In this case, a commercial electricity-generating airborne turbine and a commercial floating storage unit are considered as part of the case study. The developed scalability model indicates that the traction force is the most critical design parameter to scale up a wind turbine. On the other hand, the developed compatibility model shows that there is a notorious complexity in merging airborne and ship technology due to their contexts. Consequently, this research appears to be relevant for both, the airborne technology industry and the maritime industry toward more innovative and cost-effective applications.