Circular Track and Carousel Kite Farm surface concepts are conceptual competitors to KiteLab's Anchor-Circle Belay-Rotation method. Obviously, an anchor-circle is far cheaper and faster to deploy, with far less environmental impact from embodied material and land disturbance.

Tracks and carousels still promised a narrow operational advantage, the apparent ease of rotation of a kite arch formation. The early circle-belay method was shown to be workable (Mothra1), but even with a depower input, required powerful winching to haul the leading side of the arch to windward. While powerful belay winches were but a fraction of the capital expense of a carousel or track, they would still have been a major capital item. With the new method described here, such winches are not needed.

Lately, Mothra arches have developed a second set of load-paths that converge on the center of the anchor circle. These new loadpaths enable monolithic loads to be lifted with well distributed forces, or the power outputs of many WECS to converge at one center point.

A centerpoint anchor therefore enables an entire arch to rotate semi-passively to match wind direction, much like a single-anchor kite. All that is required is to slack the side-lines so the arch rotates briefly from the center anchor. Once rotation is completed, the side-lines are re-tensioned to once again act as deterministic stabilizers, and wing-area maximizers.

Brief depower-repower of the arch would be a refinement of the method. No massive belay winches would be needed. The new load paths contribute to the working-load safety-factor (8 to 1) and are fully able to take the full ordinary load of the arch (at a 4 to 1 safety margin, with the slack sidelines as "preventers").

This new Easy-Belay method seems to be the last key solution needed for optimal kite-farms based on megascale kite arches flown from anchor circles (or "anchor-fields"). It will be tested and perfected in upcoming small-scale sessions. The idea is a natural extension of the offshore rotating arch method JoeF recently identified (single-point deep-submerged bridle).

• CoolIP* and CC BY NC SA        ~Dave Santos         19Jan2013              AirborneWindEnergy/message/8453

Comment and development of this topic will be occurring here.       
All, send notes, links, drawings, papers, videos, plans, safety-critical findings, and photographs!

• Terms and aspects:   
  • belay, belaying, belayer        wiki/Belaying
• Related links and concepts:
  • Simpler Easy-Belay Rotation of a MegaScale Arch
• Commentary is welcome:
  • v