Retrospective cost adaptive control for a ground tethered energy system

Ground tethered energy (GTE) systems are a promising technology for addressing the challenge of sustainable electric power production. This paper presents a GTE system that converts wind energy into electric energy by using a kite tethered to a spooling system. More specifically, this system converts the kinetic energy from the kite's motion into electric energy. In this paper, we introduce a dynamic model for the ground-tethered kite and present an adaptive controller that is effective for controlling the kite's motion. In particular, we present simulation results that demonstrate adaptive command following, where the kite system is able to harvest energy from the wind.