The point about fragility of LEI kites initially concerned me, but in reality, is only valid if you’re considering flying low over a populous with childish gun habits. In that environment you’re number of hours surviving a kids bb gun party assault may be valid… otherwise LEI has good enough reliability statistics that you can schedule servicing and replacements as needed.
Yes it likely has higher O&M cost, but better performance in given markets.
In offshore wind, Heck LEI has an advantage in sudden calm you can more easily recover a fallen asset.
Horses for courses.
AWES is not 1 AWES. There’s a lot of sky, with very varied weather, over a lot of different terrain, close to some very weird humans.
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I posted this analysis after reading it for a few minutes. Reading it again, these notes seem even more relevant.
They only concern the different kinds of flexible power kites and their respective ability to scale, as well as their respective iso or aniso shapes concerning some SS and NPW power kites.
Rigid wings are not directly evoked in this analysis. However, considering the results obtained so far, it can be deduced that the AWE research field could be more focused on flexible wings, above all if we consider that AWES should keep their initial goal: harnessing high altitude winds. Just compare the results of Skysails using flexible power kites, and those of all projects using rigid wings (except projects with rotors): there is no photo.