Europe’s leading pioneer of kite-based wind turbines, once touted as a solution to complaints about spoiled public sightlines, has gone bankrupt, casting doubt on both the industry’s survival and its ambitions.
The idea was simple: move wind turbines out of public view by going higher, where winds are stronger and more consistent. That was meant to solve multiple problems at once – defusing criticism about spoiled landscapes while reducing the risk to birds flying closer to the ground.
The concept became known as “airborne wind”, representing the ambition to fly kites at an altitude of above 400 metres. Academics founded spin-offs, EU grants were awarded, products were sold, and the industry made lofty promises about its ability to deliver cheap electricity.
Those ambitions came crashing back down to earth just days before Christmas.
Hamburg-based firm Skysails, the leading pioneer of high-altitude wind power, went bust, striking a massive blow to an industry built on notions of much greater efficiency than its competitors rooted to the ground.
Kites, which generate power by infinitely repeating a figure eight, thus winding and unwinding a generator down below, can generate power about 70% of the time, twice as much as onshore wind turbines.
“A free-flying wing can sweep through more sky and generate more power in a unit of time than a fixed-wing turbine,” explained clean-energy investor Saul Griffith, who had built a kite-based power company that was acquired by Google and shut down in 2020.
Skysails firm had become the shining exemplar of kite-based wind power after first selling their products to ships keen to save on fuel, attracting politicians like the former German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, before accumulating more than €30 million in debt.
The company, founded in 2001 and considered the number one in Europe after being the first to sell a kite-turbine system in the EU market, will continue to operate during the bankruptcy proceedings.
Just two years prior, the industry had described itself as “a revolutionary technology that is now ready to enter the market” while calling for €200 per Megawatt-hour in subsidies until the 2030s, easily double that of land borne competitors.
Airborne Wind Europe, the Brussels-based industry association, did not respond to Euractiv’s request for comment.
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