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The use of kites, or tethered airfoils, to harvest wind energy from high altitude winds has several advantages and disadvantages over the use of standard tower supported turbines. This project is both a step towards gaining a better understanding of how to design efficient, simple, tethered airfoil power systems and is also an offshoot technology which may prove to be useful in itself as a novel micro-hydro power system. Some of the advantages of these kite energy systems can be exploited for use in harnessing energy from water flows. One advantage is that the swept area of the lifting body can be very large even when the lifting body itself is small since it travels over long distances. Thus, theoretically, energy can be extracted from a large percentage of a river cross-section using a single hydro-kite. Using this swept area concept, an analogous kite system for a river has been initially studied and seems to show promise for harnessing energy from a river. An additional advantage of this system is that there are minimal alterations in the flow of the river as compared to traditional dam or barrage hydro-power installations.

Project Concept Image

The goal of this project is to build and test a small-scale system in a river. Some of the practical issues which need to be addressed are inclement weather, including frozen rivers during winter quarter, siting of the system (access to a possibly steep brush covered river bank), construction of a temporary base foundation, changing river heights, dealing with river debris (branches, logs, etc.), no control over river flow speed, and a need for permitting. In addition, preliminary assessments of the environmental impact of our system will be conducted. Two senior design teams, P12462 and P12463, have worked on developing an indoor scale model of the system which does not have these practical design issues to deal with. The knowledge gained in the design of the indoor scale model system will be helpful in the development of the full-size system for this project.

For an updated project description, click on the following link for the Project Readiness Package.

Full-Scale System at the Genesee River

Project Name

Hydrofoil River Power System

Project Number

P12464

Project Family

Energy and Sustainable Systems

Start Term

Winter 2011-2

End Term

Spring 2011-3

Faculty Guide

Edward Hanzlik

echeee@rit.edu

(585) 475 - 7428

Primary Customer

Mario Gomes

mwgeme@rit.edu

(585) 475 - 2148

Sponsor (financial support)

EPA P3 Grant Award

P3 Competition

Photo Gallery

Planning & Execution

Systems Design

• Presentation - 1/26/12

Detailed Design

• DDR Presentation - 2/10/12

Project Review

Photo Gallery

Videos

Data Collection

Planning & Execution

Build, Test, Document

Project Review

Final Presentation - 5/18/12

Technical Paper

Senior Design Poster

Owner's Manual