In 2012 Dr. Roland Schmehl of TU Delft spoke on the TEDxDelft stage about wind energy. His talk, titled ‘Finally, Kites have Grown up’, about how kites can be used to generate energy.
We spoke to Dr. Schmehl about where he is now, and when we can finally look forward to replacing wind-turbines with kites…
In this series we will be talking to past TEDxDelft speakers from TU Delft to find out, ‘Where are they now?’ TEDxDelft conferences are held once a year and often feature a number of TU Delft faculty, staff and students. You can watch their TEDxDelft talks on their website.
What major projects have you completed, since speaking at TEDxDelft?
Personally I held a conference in June 2015, it was only for airborne wind energy but we had more than 200 people there, and it was internationally acclaimed, with many people from different companies and research groups. Google presented their 600 kilowatt airborne wind turbine, and this was a landmark cross-section through all the developments and I organized it, I would say it was my key event.
Did speaking at TEDxDelft in any way benefit your work?
Of course! I found it absolutely great, it fills a niche that is absolutely an accelerator, not only in gaining publicity but also showcasing something and I would say our projects have certainly benefitted from that. After TEDxDelft I published a book with Springer on our technology, and I would say my presentation one year before this publication was one of the key drivers, as I got a lot of feedback and selected a lot of contributors for that book.
What are you still working on?
I want to make the technology that we develop into a successful economically viable solution next to conventional wind turbines. Airborne wind energy has the technical potential to produce energy at lower costs than conventional wind turbines but we need to solve a few challenges on the way. We have shown that automatic operation of this technology is possible but the road to economic viability is quite long, you have to show it’s reliable, that you address all aspects. The good thing is we have Google leading the way, and several other well-known industrial projects that compete with Google and it’s just a question of time until there is a breakthrough.
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