Dynamic Modeling of Floating Offshore Airborne Wind Energy Converters
Airborne wind energy converters represent a promising new technology that aims at providing low cost electricity by exploiting airborne systems to harvest energy from high-altitude winds. These plants are interesting for their potential high power density
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Dynamic Modeling of Floating Offshore Airborne Wind Energy Converters Antonello Cherubini, Giacomo Moretti and Marco Fontana
Abstract Airborne wind energy converters represent a promising new technology that aims at providing low cost electricity by exploiting airborne systems to harvest energy from high-altitude winds. These plants are interesting for their potential high power density, i.e. ratio between nominal power and weight of required constructions, that makes it possible to forecast extremely low levelized cost for the produced electricity. However, installations of airborne wind energy converters in inland areas might be limited by the required free airspace and by safety problems. For these reasons, marine installations are envisaged, with special interest on the case of floating platforms in deep water locations, that are the most abundantly available. In order to properly address the problem of design and verification of such a kind of system, models that are able to describe the dynamic response of floating platforms to combined kite forces and wave loads have to be developed. This chapter presents a simplified 6 degree-of-freedom model, which couples the linear hydrodynamics of the floating platform with the aerodynamics of the airborne system. A case study is also introduced showing how the dynamic response of the floating platform can affect the performances of the system introducing irregularities in the power output.
7.1 Introduction Airborne wind energy converters (AWECs) are emerging devices capable of producing electricity from wind energy at altitudes that are currently unreachable by conventional wind turbines. This new technology appears exceptionally promising from the point of view of:
Antonello Cherubini · Giacomo Moretti · Marco Fontana () PERCRO SEES, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri 33, 56127 Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 R. Schmehl (ed.), Airborne Wind Energy, Green Energy and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1947-0_7
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Antonello Cherubini, Giacomo Moretti and Marco Fontana
• increased power production, because of the high power density and high capacity factors, provided by the level of energy density and persistence of winds that blows at higher layers of the atmosphere [2]; • reduced capital costs, thanks to the tensile slender structure provided by the intrinsic advantageous loading conditions of AWEC foundations. The combination of the above mentioned positive aspects makes it possible to predict high income and low installation/maintenance costs and consequently reduced levelised cost of electricity [16]. The last decade has seen a remarkable growth of the AWEC sector. A number of prototypes have been built by academic research groups and companies around the world and the associated techno-scientific community is growing fast, trying to close the gap between research and market fit [11]. In the last years, several companies are steadily progressing toward the implementation of full-scale d
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