Companies continue to work on new and environmentally friendly technologies every day to reduce their carbon footprint. Some of these studies, on the other hand, are quite surprising when we first hear them, but they may sound ‘logical’.
I am sure that most of us flew kites in our childhood years. You remember how we flew our kite running around and how our kites were soaring in the sky. Here, some companies aim to use this situation for energy production. So how?
Wind energy can be produced from kite
Approximately 10 companies from Europe and the USA are currently working to generate energy from kite. At the core of these projects, however, is our constant search for a wind to keep our kite in the air, just as we did in our childhood. The companies say that in areas where there is not enough air flow to install wind turbines, kites placed high enough can do the job. Of course, there is a big difference between the energy produced by a kite and a wind turbine, but still, considering the carbon footprint, it is seen as a very good method for energy production.
SkySails was the first company to introduce this technology in 2021, and the project consisted of a steerable kite. Attached to the shipping container with a rope of about 800 meters, the kite could produce 80 kilowatts of power by drawing an ‘8’ in the sky. This meant that it was able to power around 60 households. Considering that wind turbines provide about 2.75 megawatts of energy, the power obtained from the kite is actually quite low. However, in order to close the gap, the companies decided to increase the ground clearance of the kite. As a result, the higher the altitude, the stronger the wind will be and more power will be obtained.
However, kite farms are also seen as a very logical option considering the materials used and the duration of use. While a kite farm can be built using 913 metric tons of material, about 2,868 metric tons of material is required for a wind turbine farm. It is stated that kite farms with a life of 20 years are a more environmentally friendly and cheaper way. A large number of companies have started using kite power generation, but these numbers are expected to be much higher in the future and this technology is expected to become more and more common.
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