Autonomous Airborne Wind Energy Systems: Accomplishments and Challenges

Airborne wind energy (AWE) is a fascinating technology to convert wind power into electricity with an autonomous tethered aircraft. Deemed a potentially game-changing solution, AWE is attracting the attention of policy makers and stakeholders with the promise of producing large amounts of cost-competitive electricity with wide applicability worldwide. Since the pioneering experimental endeavors in the years 2000-2010, there has been a clear technology convergence trend and steady progress in the field. Today, AWE systems can operate automatically with minimal supervision in all operational phases. A first product is also being commercialized. However, all-around fully autonomous operation still presents important fundamental challenges that are conceptually similar to those of other systems that promise to change our lives, such as fully autonomous passenger cars or service drones. At the same time, autonomous operation is necessary to enable large-scale AWE, thus combining challenging fundamental problems with high potential impact on society and the economy. This article describes the state of the art of this technology from a system perspective and with a critical view on some fundamental aspects, presents the latest automatic control results by prominent industrial players, and finally points out the most important challenges on the road to fully autonomous AWE systems.