This topic thread is medium scale TRPT but I’m always interested to consider the limits…
A limit in the potential to scale a TRPT (Tensile Rotary Power Transmission) will be how you implement the PTO (Power Take Off) mechanisms.
A TRPT comes to the ground with an elevation angle and spins transmitting torque.
A PTO holds the tethers at the end of the TRPT and extracts power by applying braking force to TRPT rotation.
You can have
a PTO where the axis is Aligned to the TRPT axis - like Daisy Kite turbine
(needs alignment tech)
or
a PTO on the ground with a vertical axis holding a TRPT - like Rotating Reel System
(needs cyclic tether length adjustment tech)
A larger ring PTO means easier torque transfer but a much heavier and more flexible machine.
A ground based PTO ring system intuitively seem easiest to scale - e.g. was Kitegen carousel ring ~1km proposed diameter? >1GW output. The design was like TRPT - a continuous rotary track. Multiple kite control pods running around the track. The output was basically proposed to be braked rotation.
Scaling a Tilting a wheel PTO is intuitively hard. How do you support and brake a large tilted rotating device above the ground? (without using a big tower again. ) and at scale?
Something like a Stuart Platform Hexapod
or the Daisy ground stations would be hard to scale >30m
(Would it ever even need to scale beyond that size is another question which could be mitigated with high tension lines, high L/D kite stacking )
Rigid systems scale and move better on water so
Potentially a PTO offshore where the tension pulls a buoy PTO over for alignment might work at scale
Like in this very old (embarrassing) drawing
or
to stay above land using a tensile rim support might alleviate the problems of scale…
This tensile rim support would still need active line management for wind alignment. But that has a much lower duty cycle than cyclic line length re-alignment where line length is altered continuously with each shaft rotation.