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KITE POWER FOR NAMIBIA, AFRICA
Impact/Purpose:
e student teams at WPI will develop, evaluate, and implement the demonstrator. The project maximizes the educational benefits of the P3 award program by extending the concepts of people, prosperity, and the planet beyond the university setting to the general public through collaboration with Overlook Farm.
e student teams at WPI will develop, evaluate, and implement the demonstrator. The project maximizes the educational benefits of the P3 award program by extending the concepts of people, prosperity, and the planet beyond the university setting to the general public through collaboration with Overlook Farm.Challenge Area: Energy
Two billion people in developing nations currently live in a perpetual blackout without access to electricity. Access to electric power would help these people prosper by alleviating the most basic inequities found in the developing world. To protect the planet, increased access to electricity in developing nations must be provided in a sustainable way by using renewable energy sources such as wind power. Wind turbines are usually used to extract energy from the wind. However, wind turbines have disadvantages for developing nations including high-cost, limited potential for use in low wind speed areas, and environmental drawbacks. The technical challenge that we seek to address is to develop a wind power concept that retains the advantages of wind power, but that is also low-cost, more friendly to the environment, and usable in regions with low wind speeds where wind turbines are not economical. Our solution to this challenge is the Wind Power from Kites concept. This concept converts the up and down motion of a tethered kite (or parafoil) to electrical energy using a power conversion mechanism and generator on the ground. Using kites instead of wind turbines has the potential to give more people in the developing world access to wind power since kites are economical in lower speed Class 2 wind regions, whereas wind turbines are not. The new concept also addresses the environmental problems of visual pollution, noise pollution, and bird kills associated with wind turbines. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) will collaborate with Heifer International’s Overlook Farm to design, build, test, and implement a one-kilowatt Power from Kites demonstrator. The Overlook Farm Learning Center allows the public to gain new understanding of the causes of poverty in developing nations by providing working demonstrations of sustainable solutions through use of experiential, interactive activities. Two undergraduat
Description:
The Phase I WPI Kite Power Team consisted of eleven WPI students, Dr. David J. Olinger (PI), Dr. Jitendra of the Rohm and Haas Company, and Dale Perkins of Heifer International’s Overlook Farm. The work of the WPI Kite Power Team was completed in two student projects, a senior design project and a junior-level project that focused on the societal and educational aspects of kite power.
The team designed, constructed, and field tested a working, one-kilowatt scale kite power demonstrator (Figure) which is based on using a rocking arm to convert the up-and-down motion of a large kite into usable electric power. The demonstrator consists of the following sub-systems;
- A large kite (100 square feet) and control tethers
- A rotating arm structure
- A kite control mechanism
- A kite angle of attack change mechanism
- A power conversion mechanism
- An electrical system that converts rotating shaft motion into useable electricity and stores it in a battery bank
The WPI Kite Power Team also worked on societal and educational aspects of the project for their junior year IQP project, focusing on the questions -What is the best way to educate the general public visiting Overlook Farm about the need for a low-cost wind power system in developing nations? How to best describe the operation of the demonstrator and its potential impact on progress and sustainability in developing nations? To answer these questions the team developed;
- A dynamic simulation and virtual animation of the kite power demonstrator
- A simple scale-model replica of the demonstrator.
- The WPI Kite Power Team Wikisite http://www2.me.wpi.edu/wpi-kites
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The project team advanced the state-of-the-art of a new, renewable energy technology. Initial field testing of the entire kite power demonstrator has been undertaken. This testing has confirmed that the wooden structure and rocking arm can withstand the structural loads created by the kite. By the date of the 4th Annual National Sustainable Design Expo we also plan to have completed additional testing of the kite power demonstrator where we generate electrical power for short time intervals. Our Phase I work should be viewed in light of the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, only two other teams working on kite power have developed a working smaller-scale kite power system that produces usable power.
The WPI students and the PI worked extensively with the two external partners; Heifer International’s Overlook Farm Learning Center and Dr. Jitendra Goela (technical consultant). A major impact of our Phase I work will be the incorporation of the demonstrator into Overlook Farm’s educational programs. Overlook Farm is a living museum dedicated to helping the general public gain new understanding of the causes of poverty through interactive demonstrations of sustainable solutions used in developing nations. We plan to permanently install the kite power demonstrator at Overlook Farm by October 2008 for viewing by the general public. Dr. Goela reviewed the student’s work and also published a technical paper with the PI on small-scale kite power system modeling.
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The WPI kite power demonstrator. b) Kite control mechanism and angle-of-attack mechanism. c) Power conversion mechanism. d) Electrical system.