Niche Strategies to Introduce Kite-Based Airborne Wind Energy

Kite-based airborne wind energy systems are new high-tech systems that provide sustainable wind energy. Instead of using a wind turbine, these systems use a kite to generate energy. Commercializing such new high-tech systems is a risky strategy, the failure rate is high. This chapter identifies barriers that block large-scale diffusion of kite-based airborne wind energy systems and specific niche strategies to deal with these barriers. The results are based upon literature research and interviews with six academic and industry experts active in the field of airborne wind energy. We identified the most important barriers to large-scale implementation of airborne wind energy. We show how particular barriers, such as the lack of knowledge of the technology and the lack of support and investment opportunities, interact and together block large-scale production and diffusion. The second result is that several niche strategies can be identified to tackle the barriers in this field. The “geographic niche strategy”, the “demo, experiment and develop niche strategy” and the “educate niche strategy” are identified as good strategies to introduce the kite-based systems. The chapter ends with a discussion of these niche strategies and how they relate to previous research into introduction of sustainable energy technologies.