Design of a small-scale prototype for research in airborne wind energy

Abstract: Airborne wind energy is a new renewable technology that promises to deliver electricity at low costs and in large quantities. Despite the steadily growing interest in this field, very limited results with real-world data have been reported so far, due to the difficulty faced by researchers when realizing an experimental setup. Indeed airborne wind energy prototypes are mechatronic devices involving many multidisciplinary aspects, for which there are currently no established design guidelines. With the aim of making research in airborne wind energy accessible to a larger number of researchers, this work provides such guidelines for a small-scale prototype. The considered system has no energy generation capabilities, but it can be realized at low costs, used with little restrictions and it allows one to test many aspects of the technology, from sensors to actuators to wing design and materials. In addition to the guidelines, the paper provides the details of the design and costs of an experimental setup realized at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and successfully used to develop and test sensor fusion and automatic control solutions.