Kite Turbine Ground-Station

Engineering Ground station
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I put a video introducing the W&I 2018 Ground Station on Youtube

This video shows how an airborne wind turbine ground station works.
This kite turbine ground station was used over a series of tests with various different kite turbines from 2018 to 2020
I describe how it was made and how it works.

The video is primarily for a design engineering student group.
Will be a helpful intro if you are considering making a kite turbine.

A few more resources on the git page

Well, thereā€™s a lot of scope for improvement.

2 Likes
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Looks like a birthday cake to me.

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Some peopleā€¦ Douglas Sprigs Selsam
Thereā€™s a warning on the box
It clearly says
ā€œNot Ice-cream and Not Chocolatesā€

Cake

They just keep making better idiots
:wink:

Fair enough the controller is housed in a recycled chocolate box
My previous controller box had been an ice-cream tubā€¦ Youā€™re probably right.
Next up should be something more robust and moisture resistant like a cake box.

Lunacy & yet genius
Thanks for the advice

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Sub-category has been created.

Forgot about our beautiful accent. Was interesting to learn more about your ā€œgrind staionā€ :stuck_out_tongue:

The way you connected the load cell seems a bit hackey (unlike to rest of the station). Lots of friciton on the rope and stuff.

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I have to admit the look of the white/blue box somewhat reminding of a cake, before @dougselsamā€˜s comment. But I had the politeness to shut up :slight_smile:

1 Like
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The way I connected the load cells looks dodgy at best
It wasnā€™t all that bad. The batteries were standard bike 36V housings with their own switching and onboard BMS so not too much to go wrong. The junction box with 2 hefty enough switches just allowed connecting and disconnecting them in parallel to swap out full ones. There was also a Voltage and current meter to keep me aware of the battery states.
There was one battery set I built which wasnā€™t BMS protected. not wise.
Iā€™ve seen worse.

Where are you seeing lots of friction on rope?
Are you implying the Aero drag? The shaft is a very small diameter as compared to the rotors.
The ability to work a smaller diameter shaft at ground level helps to keep the ground station small.

Grind Station? Really? oh myā€¦ One day Iā€™ll be scripted, directed and edited

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I just meant the rope connecting the load cell. Might not be relevant.

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OMG Iā€™m dense.
Yeah ok I know what a load cell is everyone okay!
That rope was a fairly good easy way to get the tension load cell in kinda the right alignment .

Iā€™d probably thought by load cell you meant batteries doh