A few years ago Gunther Niessen presented a concept for winning wind energy with an airplane on a cable .
The aircraft is becoming more and more like a piloted pilot and energy is generated by rolling out the cable. The cable is on a drum with dynamo. Bottom left in the picture.
The plane already behaves like a wick of a windmill, but at a height of between 500 and 3000 m. There it blows more than at 100 m altitude.
On the picture it flies up and down, but the air is 3 dimensional. I think that from left to right, there will be flown back and forth.
I have not heard from him for a few years.
His own website has disappeared.
Now his concept turns up with a trial by the Ampyx Power company from The Hague, which at Brennels in the Noord Oostpolder will do a 2 year experiment with the concept of Gunther Niessen.
Only is he still involved?
I can not find his name on the Ampyx Power website . According to the Chamber of Commerce it is a BV in formation and the data are temporarily unavailable.
The Ampyx Power trial takes place on the Brennels site in the Noord Oostpolder, Brennels grows nettles and makes the fibers clothes.
It came in the news because the municipality NOP Brennels has given a building permit for a ground station.
In that building comes the dynamo with drum, on which the cable is.
When the plane is in the air, it flies horizontally back and forth, just like you do with a piloted pilot. If you have ever done that, you know that such flying back and forth produces a lot of pulling power. With this, this aircraft pulls a cable from a drum. The dynamo in the drum brakes the drum a bit and delivers energy.
If the cable is back and forth after a number of flights back and forth, the aircraft goes back down to the ground station in a dive. This way the cable is caught up again. The alternator is then just the motor that drives the drum and rolls up the cable.
When the aircraft has dropped to about 500 m and the cable has been overtaken as much as possible, the pattern starts again.
The main wing of this aircraft can be compared to the wick of a windmill.
Provided the plane is well controlled.
Only this way of wind energy winning does not require a tower, and the heavy generator remains on the ground. These are all significant cost savings.
However, there is a very much used cable, which will wear and have to be replaced for so much time. And there is a risk of cable breakage. In that case, the aircraft can of course fly independently and neatly land in the right place.
If everything works well.
In normal operation, the aircraft must of course fly entirely independently and return to the ground station in time.
Moreover, it could well be that the installation requires permanent manning to bring the aircraft into the right starting position, when it has to take off again after a wind. But that can also be done automatically. In the port of Rotterdam they also have automatic container transporters.
That is why the newly mounted Ampyx Power will first test with a smaller aircraft and at lower altitude .
What needs to be new and tested is the long cable and the independent and optimal flying of the aircraft, and prove that it is all safe.
I first heard about this concept from a Gunther Niessen. He has applied for a patent for a part of this system. While searching for that patent, I met many fathers of the idea.
Actually, it would be neat if Ampyx put the ideas of others in a row that eventually led to their experiment, and whether they added something themselves.
I sent Ampyx an email.
Update:
Within a few hours an email back from Bas Lansdorp of Ampyx Power from The Hague.
The concept was published in 1980 by one Miles L. Loyd of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US. "Cross wind kite power". That is only a theoretical treatise, but there is enough to conclude that the concept is already 30 years old.
In 2008 this was done again by a group of Germans and a Dutchman " The pumping Kite Wind Generator: Optimization of the Power Output "
In the online story is immediately one of the problems to be solved:
Wear on the cable.
That cable is constantly rolled off a drum and then quickly rolled up again.
They styled that they have chosen a large drum to be able to have just 1 layer of cable. Which limits the height again.
If there are more layers of cable on the drum, the cable rubs over the layer underneath, causing extra wear.
Below a photo from the 2008 story. On the back of the tractor, the drum with the cable and the generator in it. The kite of about 15m2 yielded 95 kW at a height of 300 m.
