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SUMMARY:High-altitude Wind Energy Generation.
DTSTART:20110301T101500
DTSTAMP:20260408T015647Z
UID:3f122119c6443a1bac8166df48792f8777b2a2a48448bde403c4e117
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr. L. Fagiano\, Marie Curie fellow at Politecnico di Torino\,
  Italy.\nSustainable energy generation is one of the most urgent challenge
 s that mankind is facing nowadays. Unfortunately\, the actual renewable en
 ergies are not competitive with respect to fossil sources due to the high 
 costs of the related technologies\, their variable and non-uniform availab
 ility and their low power density per unit area. Thus\, a breakthrough wou
 ld be needed in renewable energy generation to foster its application and 
 to produce everywhere large quantities of cheap\, green energy. Such a rad
 ical innovation may be obtained by converting high-altitude wind energy in
 to electricity. The idea\, firstly investigated about 30 years ago but onl
 y recently developed by some research groups and companies around the worl
 d\, is to exploit the aerodynamic forces generated by automatically contro
 lled tethered wings. Such wings are able to reach much higher altitudes th
 an the actual wind turbines\, where stronger and more constant wind can be
  found practically everywhere. The generated forces are then converted int
 o mechanical and electrical power by using suitable devices\, either onboa
 rd or at ground level. Automatic control is a key point of this technology
 \, since the system to be controlled is open loop unstable\, highly nonlin
 ear and subject to operational constraints. In this talk\, the main charac
 teristics and the potentials of the outlined concept of high-altitude wind
  energy will be described\, and the main results obtained so far in severa
 l research projects at Politecnico di Torino\, including theoretical analy
 ses\, numerical simulations and experimental activities\, will be discusse
 d.
LOCATION:ME C2 405
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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