Retrospective cost adaptive control for a ground tethered energy system

Ground tethered energy (GTE) systems are a promising technology for addressing the challenge of sustainable electric power production. This paper presents a GTE system that converts wind energy into electric energy by using a kite tethered to a spooling system. More specifically, this system converts the kinetic energy from the kite´s motion into electric energy. In this paper, we introduce a dynamic model for the ground-tethered kite and present an adaptive controller that is effective for controlling the kite´s motion. In particular, we present simulation results that demonstrate adaptive command following, where the kite system is able to harvest energy from the wind.