Anyone who has flown a traction kite, such as those used for kiteboarding, knows the truly awe inspiring power of the wind. KiteBot was conceived from such an experience in 2002. Since then, I've designed, and redesigned dozens of times, a kite-based wind energy system with the singular goal of making it as simple as absolutely possible. I've been motivated by wanting to be able to build it, on my own, with a modest budget.Meanwhile, I've watched several efforts develop that appear to be working towards the realization of similar systems, each having a unique approach to the problem. The sheer number of efforts alone can be overwhelming. In investigating various efforts, I've found the available information to be: - A description of an elaborate system well out of the reach of a DIY effort.
- Irrelevant to the realization of an actual solution, either because
- It is deliberately secretive, or
- It consists largely of soapboxing about the enormous potential of wind power
What this project aims to do, first and foremost, is to provide simple, step-by-step instructions to build a viable kite energy system, free for anybody to use or modify. Purpose- Foster a community of open collaboration
- Refine the design specifications to accomodate implementation with limited resource availability
- Protect the efforts of the community from Intellectual Property Law prosecution
Goals- Build first working KiteBot.
- Patent the novel components and provide free commons licensing.
- Prove that KiteBot can scale to supplement energy generation in developed markets.
- Establish low cost component supply chains for KiteBots in developing markets.
Principles
- DIY
KiteBot should be as cheap and simple to build as absolutely possible. This isn't to say we won't have an eye towards building larger scale and more complex versions, but the primary deliverable is a KiteBot that can be built by anyone, with modest access to resources.
- Open source
The goal of this is to enable individuals and small groups to build their own KiteBots, not to create a centralized KiteBot corporation. The possibility of a demand for mass production of KiteBots only concerns this project in as much as this project's active protection of commons licensed IP would allow fair competition in the arena of component manufacturing. - Mechanical and Manual
We conscientiously choose not to consider implementations and deployments that are automated, or require any electronics whatsoever beyond an alternator used to convert mechanical energy into electricity. Of course, if this project is a success, it will naturally lead to work on such systems, but we feel that before we have met our goals as stated above, these efforts are at best a distraction, and can potentially prevent us from finding the most elegant possible mechanical system.
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