Kitepower and the Journey Towards 24/7 Operation
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| Title of Series | ||
| Part Number | 37 | |
| Number of Parts | 43 | |
| Author | 0000-0001-7026-3437 (ORCID) | |
| Contributors | 0000-0002-4112-841X (ORCID) | |
| License | CC Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal and non-commercial purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor and the work or content is shared also in adapted form only under the conditions of this | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/51049 (DOI) | |
| Publisher | 0000 0001 2097 4740 (ISNI) 0000 0004 1936 8139 (ISNI) | |
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| Language | ||
| Producer | ||
| Production Year | 2020 | |
| Production Place | Berlin, Germany |
Content Metadata
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00:00
RutschungSpaceflightLecture/Conference
00:29
SpaceflightLecture/Conference
01:17
Automatic watchAutomatic watchShip naming and launchingSwitcherRail transport operationsSpare partLecture/Conference
01:39
Spare part
01:54
Automatic watchShip naming and launchingSwitcherHot working
02:07
BecherwerkStationerySpare partCartridge (firearms)Ship of the lineLecture/Conference
02:33
Ford TransitLifting hookStagecoach
02:48
Volumetric flow rateWater vaporLecture/Conference
03:26
Lecture/Conference
03:44
Rail transport operationsLecture/Conference
04:03
Flight
04:11
TurningTypesettingHot isostatic pressingComputer animationLecture/Conference
04:44
Lecture/Conference
05:01
Cut (gems)Lecture/Conference
05:22
Hose coupling
05:40
TrainLecture/Conference
06:03
Trainer (aircraft)Rail transport operationsFlightEinradReset (computing)Lecture/Conference
06:39
Rail transport operationsPhotographic processingLecture/Conference
07:11
Intermediate bulk container
07:39
FlightLecture/Conference
07:50
FlightRail transport operations
08:06
Rail transport operationsLecture/Conference
08:33
Automobile platformPhotographic processingShip of the lineContinuous trackLecture/Conference
09:24
Lecture/Conference
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
Wow. I'm honored to speak in front of the whole crowd. Like Roland said, I'm Johan's special founder of KitePower. And I have a lot of interesting slides for you and I hope I get through them all. And I think I'm going to start on this side and then at half time I need your signal and I'm going to also talk in front of you.
00:25
Yeah? Is that good? Nice. I'm very happy to see a lot of people here to have the same mission as I do. And especially that you've also chosen the same path to accomplish it.
00:41
So thanks to you guys to all be here. We have a more particular mission at KitePower. So we want to be one of the first ones who have a commercial system out there. And the way to go there for us is find the simplest system you can possibly have and make it work.
01:03
And scale up from there. So our system will be 100 kilowatt units that shall deliver 450 megawatt hours per year based on the wind in the Netherlands. I was also here two years ago and I pointed out this roadmap.
01:21
So let's look today at what we actually did. So we thought about automatic launch and landing. Then we have a pilot operation for one year and the system is ready. We started off with ground station one which you see in the back there.
01:44
So this is a very small thing there, 20 kilowatts. Yeah but if I point here then the other ones don't see it. And a 25 square meter kite in a nice black slick design.
02:01
We got the automatic launch and landing working and we had some pilots. So first one to make it easy. We started in a nature resort on a dike next to the highway and we flew at night. Two kites with a glowing line.
02:22
That was quite a learning experience I would say. We just flew one power system and the other one was just a lifter kite. After that we tuned our next ground station, ground station two. It was also on the dike for convenience.
02:43
So here you see ground station one in front, ground station two in the back. We hooked them up against each other and then we brought it to the Dutch military. That was also quite a nice time, we had a lot of space there.
03:01
So we placed it in the middle of nowhere in the north of Holland and we flew with the Dutch military. We trained them for one day and the next day they had to do it. They all managed, in fact they set the system up quicker than we ever did. Well, that's good. Soldiers don't ask many questions, they just do.
03:25
So there was quite some intense weather also. So in the morning it was frost and then it was snowing and all kind of weird situations. All fine. Then we thought, a 25 square meter kite, that's a bit too easy.
03:40
And we really like flying big kites. So what we did then is, we took the next bigger one, 40 square meter. Which is the one you see in the middle here. So then we tuned this one, we flew it and we prepared for continuous operation.
04:01
Which we then did at the end of last year. So we had a week of operation, we also flew at night. That's a long exposure shot of this flight. I really like it, you don't see nothing. But it's just the light on the kite, so it flies the figure of 8.
04:21
At some point you will see also another light coming from the side. Which is not a second kite by an airplane. So don't be afraid that they crash, they are operating at different altitudes. So yeah, I think that's the real phase now.
04:44
Alright, you got the idea right? So if you just make a long exposure shot, it looks like something like this. It doesn't look familiar like anything else, you know? After that, we have decided.
05:02
So this was the time, 5 minutes left. This was the time, where we said, it's not quite ready and we actually want to fly bigger kites. Because that's our favorite thing, scaling up kites.
05:21
So we thought, let's try, let's fly the bigger one now. And let's take some more time to get the system better run. So that's what we did. We also decided we need a couple of more kite control robots. So we started a small series production of that.
05:41
We also need to improve our logistics. So we established a training program actually. We established remote monitoring of the system. So actually now, I can launch the kites from the office with my phone. That's quite nice. We trained a lot of people.
06:03
We actually created a profession, which is like kite operator. We now train 17 people. We have 4 trainers in total in the world, all employed at KitePower. And because it was so fun to set up all these processes, we said, let's get a certification as well.
06:28
So this is the timeline in flight days. And you nicely see the yearly cycle of scaling up kites.
06:41
That was the history. So now, we want to look in the future. And we want to keep operating the system to get it to a level that we can deploy it. So with this whole development, we split up our company basically in an operations branch, which just operates the system, and an R&D branch.
07:04
So we can test new kites, new ground stations, and fly for long in the same time. So that's the goal for next year. What do we have to test? This is the new ground station, ground station 3, which we assembled together with all the feedback we got from the customers, which is now finally in a nice container.
07:25
And the other container, maybe also is a ground station, maybe not. I cannot tell. We have a 100 square meter kite to test. You know, that's our favorite thing, to fly big kites.
07:40
But we're going to work real hard. To make the system fly. And when I mean real hard, I mean real hard. We're going to score some extra points, flying, collecting some flight data, making some night shifts, and eventually
08:02
get the operations where we want them to be, and the system where we want it to be. This is key to actually deploy the system in a remote island. So when we're done with 2,000 hours of continuous operation, we're going to place it in Curaçao, where we have a test site.
08:22
We have other six potential customers aligned. But I would say there's still space for more, if you guys are interested. After that, oh, no, looking, timeline shifted a bit, but I think it's understandable. We're still on track, we're doing our best.
08:44
And then afterwards, we can look in the future. So, we're down here, and eventually at some point, we want to be in the other side of the spectrum. So for that, we need all your help.
09:02
We need to work together. If you guys want to join the team, you're very welcome. We always look for the brightest minds. If you guys want to have a partnership, development, if you guys want to give us money to make this faster, also cool.