Assessment of the Black Sea High-Altitude Wind Energy

Abstract

Airborne wind energy systems (AWESs) represent a novel idea that aims to gather energy from stronger winds aloft while operating at altitudes above conventional wind turbines (WTs). For this study, we examined the wind resources at a height of 100 m available for traditional wind turbines with aerial wind energy technologies, in addition to the wind potential at higher altitudes up to 500 m. The considered period was 20 years from January 2002 to December 2020, and the data were extracted from the ERA5 reanalysis database. We studied the possibility of placing 500 kW and 5 MW airborne systems in the Black Sea and the Azov Sea and compared them with a conventional turbine. As expected, the western part of the Black Sea presented the best results, both for the 500 kW airborne system with an annual energy production (AEP) of 2.39 GWh and a capacity factor of 55%, and for the 5 MW airborne system, which has an annual electricity production of 15.81 GWh and a capacity factor of 36%. Better results were recorded for the Sea of Azov for both the 500 kW and the 5 MW airborne systems, with an AEP of 2.5 and 15.81 GWh and a capacity factor of 58% and 36%, respectively.