Power kites for wind energy generation fast predictive control of tethered airfoils

There are problems posed by electric energy generation from fossil sources and can be overcome by alternative sources that are renewable. However, the current wind power renewable technologies have limitations. Addressing this issue, the KiteGen project was initiated at Politecnico di Torino in designing and building a new class of wind energy generators in collaboration with Sequoia Automation, Modelway, and Centro Studi Industriali. The project aims to capture wind energy by means of controlled tethered airfoils, that is, kite. The KiteGen project has designed and simulated a small-scale prototype, which aims to demonstrate the ability to control the flight of a single kite in producing a significant amount of energy, and verifying the energy production levels predicted in simulation studies. Meanwhile, in order to investigate the potential of KiteGen and to assist in the design of physical prototypes, a controller is designed for use in numerical simulations.