Operation Approval for Commercial Airborne Wind Energy Systems

Volkan Salma () and Roland Schmehl
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Volkan Salma: Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands
Roland Schmehl: Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 7, 1-23

Abstract: Integrating the operation of airborne wind energy systems safely into the airspace requires a systematic qualification process. It seems likely that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency will approve commercial systems as unmanned aircraft systems within the “specific” category, requiring risk-based operational authorization. In this paper, we interpret the risk assessment methodology for airborne wind energy systems, going through the ten required steps of the recommended procedure and discussing the particularities of tethered energy-harvesting systems. Although the described process applies to the entire field of airborne wind energy, we detail it for a commercial flexible-wing airborne wind energy system. We find that the air risk mitigations improve the consolidated specific assurance and integrity level by a factor of two. It is expected that the framework will increase the safety level of commercial airborne wind energy systems and ultimately lead to operation approval.

Keywords: airborne wind energy; tethered UAS; specific operations risk assessment; SORA; CONOPS; SAIL; specific category; certification; safety requirements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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