Feed-Forward Control of Kite Power Systems

Kite power technology is a novel solution to harvest wind energy from altitudes that can not be reached by conventional wind turbines. The use of a lightweight but strong tether in place of an expensive tower provides an additional cost advantage, next to the higher capacity factor. This paper describes a method to estimate the wind velocity at the kite using measurement data at the kite and at the ground. Focussing on a kite power system, which is converting the traction power of a kite in a pumping mode of operation, a reel-out speed predictor is presented for use in feed-forward control of the tether reel-out speed of the winch. The results show, that the developed feedforward controller improves the force control accuracy by a factor of two compared to the previously used feedback controller. This allows to use a higher set force during the reel-out phase which in turn increases the average power output by more than 4%. Due to its straightforward implementation and low computational requirements feedforward control is considered a promising technique for the reliable and efficient operation of traction-based kite power systems.