Kitegen reveals some progress with the 3 megawatt kite wind power system

Here is the english translation of a recent post from Kitegen. Success with Kitegen could lead to radical improvement in the cost and amount of energy from wind.

The original page in italian is here

Nextbigfuture’s coverage from May 2011.

This is the preproduction sample of Kitegen (3 Megawatt prototype) that was being developed in 2011. It is located near a dump in the City of Sommariva Perno. Once fully operational the plant will work for 6000 hours per year and will be able to meet the electricity demand of about 30,000 households. Kitegen already has plans to build 50 machines in series, with orders coming from various parts of the world.

For a few weeks Kitegen has begun testing automatic takeoff and were collected numerous technical achievements. In one test, in particular, Wednesday Feb 15,2012 take-off occurred with just 1.5 meter / second wind on the ground.

The Stem (3 megawatt prototype stem) has followed the procedures laid down tilt for takeoff automatically allowing the kite to take flight thanks to the apparent wind generated (no need of twenty artificial mentioned in the documentation on this site) and completely unrolling the cable of 300 m.

We know that the European average wind is around 3 m / s then this exceptional result establishes that the KiteGen has the freedom to take off at any time and without aids for at least 5000 hours per year.

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