Energy Storage Systems for Airborne Wind Generators

Airborne wind energy systems are known for their volatile output power profile, which can be improved by incorporating energy storage systems for filtering. Lithium iron phosphate batteries, ultracapacitors, and flywheels are compared in this paper under various wind conditions using different power filtering strategies. The comparison considers the energy storage capacity, cost, aging, and reserve storage for ancillary grid services. The results suggest that Lithium batteries have a competitive edge in terms of cost/kWh, whereas steel flywheels provide the cheapest overall solution. The impact of wind turbulence on the system cost was found to be limited. Moreover, reducing the power filtering quality did not contribute to any cost savings. The study also reveals the importance of the holistic cost analysis approach to recognize the trade-offs between savings in the energy storage cost and the rest of the system.