Windlift Progress, new student project

Still have about 10k words to go on the thesis but the end is in sight and seeing as the wind hasn't picked up enough yet to go testing I thought it might be time for a quick post.

Here's a video showing the new prototype from Windlift, which is a departure from their old sled system to a reel based device. The test shows power peaking at 3kW at 8-12 mph though I'm not sure how high that wind measurement was taken or the size of the surf kite being used. Either way it shows some great progress over the last year. The base seems to be passively rotated and its inertia means that it's not following the direction of the kite too closely, (we had this same issue on a proto system here at Sussex) but it's not going to be too hard to sort that out.



I also found this website for a student project that I hadn't seen before at the Ecole Centrale de Lille, also for a kite based system. I saw this graphic of the system concept and was impressed to hear that they had built it.

This video shows it being tested. Having seen the scale, You can see how it was affordable as a student project! They have an interesting way of doing the steering at ground level.