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Bryan Roberts, a professor of engineering at the University of Technology, in Sydney, Australia, has proposed a helicopter-like craft which flies to 15,000 feet altitude and stays there, held aloft by wings that generate lift from the wind, and held in place by a cable to a ground anchor. The Sky WindPower company in San Diego, California is attempting to commercialize this idea.
According to its designers, while some of the energy in the wind would be ĄŻlostĄŻ on lift, the constant and potent winds would allow it to generate constant electricity.
Since the winds usually blow horizontally, the turbines would be at an angle from the horizontal, catching winds while still generating lift. Deployment could be done by feeding electricity to the turbines, which would turn them into electric motors, lifting the structure into the sky.
The Dutch ex-astronaut and physicist Wubbo Ockels, working with the Delft University of Technology, has designed an airborne wind turbine he calls a "Laddermill". It consists of an endless loop of kites. The kites lift one end of the endless loop, (the "ladder") up, and the released energy is used to drive an electric generator.
The Italian project called "Kitegen" uses a prototype vertical-axis wind turbine. It is an innovative plan (still in the construction phase) that consists of one wind farm with a vertical spin axis, and employs kites to exploit high-altitude winds. The Kite Wind Generator (KWG) or KiteGen is claimed to eliminate all the static and dynamic problems that prevent the increase of the power (in terms of dimensions) obtainable from the traditional horizontal-axis wind turbine generators. Generating equipment would remain on the ground, only the airfoils are supported by the wind. An aeolic power plant conceived in this fashion is capable of producing the energy equivalent to a nuclear power plant, while exploiting an area of few square kilometres, without occupying it exclusively. (The majority of this area can still be used for agriculture, or navigation in the case of an offshore installation.)
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