PowerKite – Power Take-Off System for a Subsea Tidal Kite

Developing the next generation technologies of renewable electricity.

The EU Horizon 2020 project PowerKite will design, build and deploy a power take-off system (PTO) for a novel tidal energy collector concept, the Deep Green subsea tidal kite by Minesto. The project has a budget of 5.1M Euros and gathers 9 partners from 3 countries. Over 30 months, the project will progress the state of the art in several fields: PTO modelling, electrical design, mechanical design, data acquisition, analysis and optimisation. 

The partners to SSPA and Minesto are: Midroc Project Management AB, UW‐Elast AB, Moorlink Solutions AB, Chalmers University of Technology, Laborelec, Applied Computing & Engineering Ltd. and Queens University Belfast.

The overall objectives of the PowerKite project are:

• to gather experience in open sea conditions, 
• to enhance the structural and power performance of the PTO for a next generation tidal energy converter, 
• and to ensure high survivability, reliability and performance, low environmental impact and competitive cost of energy in the (future) commercial phases. 

The core innovation of the project resides in the electro-mechanical design of the PTO, allowing the array to be deployed in sites with low velocity currents. The project will develop full-scale components of the turbine, generator, seabed power electronics, array transformer and subsea export cable. Open sea trials will play a crucial role in the project as the deployment of the first full scale Deep Green prototype will enable extensive offshore data collection for the PTO system. 

SSPAs main focus in the project is developing the turbine design, analysis and validation of the turbine performance by numerical modelling and model testing.

Link to Minestos official press release.
 
Illustration: Ducted turbine, located in free water in front of nacelle (Minesto).