Minesto Receives €5.1 Million To Develop Deep Green Tidal Kite Technology
Leading marine renewable energy company Minesto and its partners have received €5.1 million to further develop the Deep Green tidal kite technology.
Swedish-based Minesto, along with its eight partners, will use the €5.1 million to improve the Deep Green technology’s robustness and performance with the aim of developing the next generation Deep Green power plant, with better performance, longer life expectancy, and improved reliability, and all in order to further reduce costs.
Deep Green is Minesto’s tidal kite technology, and it produces electricity as illustrated below:
- The water current creates a hydrodynamic lift force on the wing which pushes the kite forward
- The kite is steered in an 8-shaped trajectory by a rudder and reaches a speed ten times the water current speed
- As the kite moves, water flows through the turbine and electricity is produced in the gearless generator
- The electricity is transmitted through a cable in the tether attached to the wing
- The electricity continues in sub-sea cables on the seabed to the shore
Minesto boasts that Deep Green reaches a speed 10 times higher than the actual current of the water, which, subsequently, has a cubic relationship to the power, giving 1,000 times more power.
The investment comes by way of EU Horizon 2020, “the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever,” making use of nearly €80 billion of funding available between 2014 to 2020.
”Succeeding in establishing development projects with leading players in Europe like this, is a proof of the interest in our product and our ability to establish large projects,” said Anders Jansson, CEO of Minesto. ”Being able to take part in this effort on marine energy, by the EU, is of course highly pleasing, motivating and extremely important.”
The Deep Green development program will run for 30 months, investigating and building a more reliable and efficient, while equally environmentally friendly, technology.
“We have been involved in the marine energy sector for a number of years and we are delighted to be part of the PowerKite project,” said Ana Novak, Project Manager, ENGIE Lab, one of Minesto’s eight partners. ”The Deep Green technology is focusing on proving cost-efficient use of low velocity tidal streams which could be beneficial for the tidal sector as a whole.”
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The volume of water reserved for the kites and blocked ti shipping must be much higher than with fixed-rotor turbines. Tidal plants are necessarily close inshore, so this obstacle may be significant.
Acording to it’s website http://minesto.com/deep-green/ the kites operate at a depth between 60-120meters, so small boats etc should pass over OK. Don’t know about turbulance though.
Sure, the energy in water is related to the cube of the water flow, but you can’t create free energy. This thing is sweeping large areas in order to get the power to reach it’s operating speed, then harvesting power from this higher speed water…
I have to question how this could possibly be as efficient as simply having an underwater ‘wind’-turbine that sweeps the whole area (or even a fraction of the area for that matter).
Unless I’m overlooking something significant, the physics don’t add up…
You’ll need to add in the “potential energy” and tensile strength of the tether, pulley or spring material in it’s construction versus the cost to manufacture the parts. The tether is what’s allowing the return speed of the kite to reach speeds 10 times higher than the water speed.
Um, not quite. Any potential energy stored in the stretching of the tether was originally put there by the water itself… again, all that energy has to come from somewhere. The system is in dynamic equilibrium. The tether only provides lateral resistance.
The reason it reaches 10 times the speed of the water is similar to how a sailboat can travel faster than the speed of the wind, it’s about deflection angles – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_faster_than_the_wind
If your mast was made of Balsa Wood it would break in 5 seconds; if your Canvas made of sub-prime material and woven improperly, your boat wouldn’t even move.
It would take many turbines to cover the area sweep by the kite. So they get less of the total energy of the total flow, but much more that a stationary turbine in the same flow. If you keep them deep enough below the surface, even large ships can pass over them. Then it is only subs that have to worry.
Underwater KiteGen.
What about kelp or other sea weed? What about fish? The number of floating and swimming organisms which could fould the wings and turbines is great. I don’t want to be a spoil sport but this problem must be addressed.
Sorry. I mean “foul the wing and turbine….”