In my opinion, at least KiteKraft is taking a more sensible approach than Makani, regarding the kiteplane with onboard turbine approach:
If the idea is to replace most of a wind turbine’s hardware with software, they are working at a much more manageable size, which should allow the software to be developed at a similar rate as would a much larger craft, thereby allowing development at a lower cost, and possibly a faster pace since the giant craft of Makani was “too big to fail” making it difficult and inadvisable to just fly anytime. If the software is the key, why “go big” with the hardware until the software is sufficiently developed to fly the craft safely and reliably? This is what I’ve thought all along about Makani and I’ve stated it several times with regard to so many of the mega-projects that promise to power X hundred houses by year Y (which they never do): Try powering one house, maybe your own, before making absurd (in retrospect especially) claims that you will power hundreds of homes! On the one hand, you have the pervasive theme that any project must generate huge amounts of power to be taken seriously, but on the other hand, why would anyone take the inflated claims of powering hundreds of homes seriously if there is no single home already being powered?
Makani started small as well. Then perhaps grew too fast. Kitekraft are still working at smaller scale. We’ll see how they decide to scale in the future. Given enough funding and external push, I’m sure Kitekraft would love to build a 600 kW unit before you can say…
Seems to me that myself and Kitekraft are in disagreement on the importance of computers. No software will make a crappy wing produce lots of energy. AWE is a multi dicipline art requiring a lot from mechanical design, aerodynamics, electronics and software… unless all the parts are done well it will not work.
Drag power kite with very high lift coefficient publication mentions a lift coefficient of 4 or 5 for a biplane such like KiteKRAFT wing. Does anyone know if this very high value has been experienced? If simulation matches experimentation, that could be interesting, knowing that a slower wing for an equivalent power could lead to a better use of the space by tighter turns, so more potential of scaling up.
Good to see another KiteKRAFT media article
This one shows off another version of the model