Show notes
Mark Hoppe, VP of Public Affairs & Business Development at SkySails Power, discusses their containerized airborne wind energy system. The innovative technology captures high-altitude winds with kite-based systems, producing up to 50% more yield than traditional turbines. Mark delves into the operational mechanics, deployment in remote and island nations, and future market expansion.
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Allen Hall: With traditional wind turbines, limited by location and high material costs, the industry needs innovative solutions for clean energy in remote areas. This week we speak with Mark Hoppe at SkySails Power. SkySails has developed a containerized airborne wind energy system that captures high altitude winds with unique kite technology producing up to 50% more yield than conventional turbines while being deployable nearly anywhere on the planet.
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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Mark, welcome to the podcast.
Mark Hoppe: Yeah, thanks, man. Nice to be here.
Allen Hall: I've been looking to talk to you for. Ooh, going on at least two years because I saw SkySails in Hamburg at the Hamburg Wind Energy Show, and I thought, wow, this is really cool. And then, and the display was [00:01:00] good and the information was good.
I just didn't know how much effort had gone into it at that point. And, and we're two years further along, obviously. The SkySails technology and the problem you're solving is really fascinating because there's a lot of places on the planet that could use wind energy, but a standard horizontal axis wind turbine is probably the not the right approach, and diesel ends up being the winner on a lot of these places.
Mark Hoppe: That's a problem. Definitely, definitely. So yeah, our technology solves a lot of these problems, but of course our technology is not just meant for these kind of places. So this is the entry point where we go in as, these places, they've faced a lot of issues when it comes to logistics, prices of the diesel because of the transport costs.
That also includes in, in the diesel prices, which then makes the diesel even, even pricier. So, and due to, they have to spend a lot, a lot of money on the diesel. Then they have the issue that they don't have [00:02:00] the money for social development, for example. 'Cause they have to subsidize their power prices and all this comes along.
So what we have as a solution for that problem is that we have a containerized wind power system. It's so-called airborne wind energy system which uses the high altitude wind, which is more powerful. So we fly in heights between two and 400 meters, sometimes even higher. It depends on the width direction and everything.
And due to that we can use the higher wind and then produce 50% more yield than the typical wind turbine at the same size. So that's crazy.
Allen Hall: Yes, that's, that's really good. I think the technology and the approach is innovative. So the, the solution to get rid of all the dependence on diesel and some of these electric grids that are very unreliable is to put in basically electric [00:03:00] generation through a, a kite in the sense the technology seems.
Relatively simple, but I've looked at this up close. There's actually a lot of technology here because the system itself is really containerized. It's like dropping a diesel generator on site somewhere, but except it's a kite. Instead, you wanna explain basically how the system operates and what someone would see if they're watching it work?
Mark Hoppe: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So basically we, we always divide it into two subsystems more or less. So we have the ground station, which is a container. It's a 30 feet container, so you can ship everywhere and just need one truck to to, to actually transport it somewhere. So this is really easy. And then you have the flying system. And the flying system at the ground station,
they're connected via the start and landing mass. And the start and landing mast, so in, in the front of the start and landing mast, you have the kites. So when the start and landing mast goes up, [00:04:00] the in floating wind unfolds the kite and then the, the, the wind takes the kite upwards. And underneath the kite you have a robota, you can call it, we call it the control po.
It's, you can compare it to a paraglide pilot more or less. And there you have an autopilot who steers to the whole system. Then what does is, I don't know, have you, have you ever been kite surfing before?
Allen Hall: Yeah, I've seen it, yes.
Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so, so when you have kite surfing, you, you try to fly your kite in, in the so-called power zone, 'cause you have the wind window, so in the middle of it you have the power zone there, you have the most force and the autopilot does the same.
So it actually tries to fly inside the power zone all the time. So you have a lot of force on the, on the tether. And when the tether is unwind from the, from the winch inside the ground station, the rotational energy is converted into electricity, [00:05:00] and then you have 800 meter long tether on the drum.
And then when, when the 800 meters gone all the way out, the autopilot takes back the kite in nose dive, so it actually pitches the kite and then it falls down from the sky, and then it has, yeah, nearly no force. Then the generator X as a motor wheels in the, the tether again. And then when the autopilot is at a hundred meter, it starts all over.
So you can compare it to a yo-yo, you know.
Allen Hall: That's a very good analogy. So the kite deploys out several hundred meters, 800 meters. Providing energy because of that pull force, turning a generator. And then in, when it reaches this extended length, it basically simplifies itself, lowers the drag, comes back in and repeats it.
So does, does that create continuous power then, or how does it handle the, the inward time in terms of. Power production? Is there a battery involved? What does that [00:06:00] look like?
Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so we always deliver our system in different configurations. So a little bit depends on this site conditions. So of course you can use it off-grid.
So what we would do then is we always deliver. So our system comes in a 30 feet container, and then you have another smaller container where you have a grid converter or a battery pack inside. And then so what we do with this solution is that we can always comply to the grid code but also of course can deliver an off grid system.
So you can either store the energy produced or use it direct or grid connect the whole system and then feed it into the grid. So that's, that's up to our customers on this side.
Joel Saxum: I think that one of the important things here to think about, like in the beginning of this conversation of how this thing looks, how it operates in the field, is that it [00:07:00] is modularized, right?
Like you've guys have taken the smart approach of putting this in a container because a lot of the places that this technology can be used can be on demand. Hey, I, in my mind, I'm thinking disaster response. I'm thinking military uses, remote microgrids. Like we have, we've had on the podcast before Hatch. Hatch works with a lot of First Nations up in Canada where they're in these really remote places.
It's hard to get infrastructure in there, but if you can bring this in on a truck, great. Right, so there's a lot of places around the world, and I know this is, that's just one use case, right? These remote, these Caribbean islands, like Allen was saying. Diesel generators, but they're paying exorbitant amounts of cost for fuel.
So this thing, this and, and the fact that you can switch over to different grids right. So different her hertz ratings and voltages coming out. Really important. So where have you guys been able to deploy the system so far?
Mark Hoppe: So, so [00:08:00] far, and, and so far we have been installing systems. So we have one system in, in northern Germany, which is our research development side also.
And that one has also been grid connected now for five years. More or less and also been operating since then, but we use it for short durations in our the research development cycle. Then we have another system which has been installed Mauritius for now, also two and a half, three years, something.
Also grid connection, which has been operated all the time because of duration tests. So we actually get some figures about, okay, how last. How lasting are materials and what do we need to do to make them even last longer? So we learned a lot in the, in the past years on that.
And now we take all this into our product development cycles, and now we have another two systems [00:09:00] which are now being delivered to Taiwan. So the next installations will be in Taiwan, and then. We have some projects going on in the Philippines, Cape Words Hawaii. So all, all of these like island states and island nations, they, they, we were really active in these spaces right now.
French Polynesia is also really interesting so far remote places. And all these island states, they have a bigger issue. They have a really big issue 'cause they're feeling the, the climate crisis first. So they need to solve it. And also, and, and also what, what we are look also looking into, which is a really interesting market, is the Caribbean.
Because there you have the same issues.