Program for Saturday 23 June 2012 (a detailed brochure can be downloaded from here):

Again a great sunny day with winds that were almost as strong as on Friday, participation was beyond the expectation: more than 100 professional and private attendeed joined the presentations and system demonstration. Among them kite control pioneer Dr. Allister Furey from England. Visiting from Norway was Olav Aleksander Bu, one of the founders of Kitemill together with three engineers of technology contractor Devotek. The University of Leuven was present with Dr. Hammad Ahmad and Dr. Andrew Wagner. Dr. Michiel Kruijff, a feasibility study manager of the European Space Agency, had a special interest in the use of space-based services for the operation and optimisation of the kite power system.

Many former colleagues and students of the research group were participating. It was great to see that some enthusiasts brought their children along who had great fun seeing a large-scale kite in operation. Maybe they will grow into university students themselves someday? Following the presentation of the technology and vision by Dr. Roland Schmehl, the visitors were brought by the offroad train from the Slufter building to the demonstration site where they could experience the system in operation and ask questions to the team members. It was very motivating to experience the strong interest of the public in this innovative renewable energy technology. After all, the Netherlands are blessed with good wind resources and many people do not like to see the country covered by massive wind turbine installations and are thus interested in alternative solutions with a reduced environmental footprint. The power production on this day was even higher than on the day before. The most import result of this great sunny and windy day on the Maasvlakte 2 were the many contacts that the team established and the new opportunities for the next phase of research and development.

The team for the public day was Roland Schmehl, Aart de Wachter, Uwe Fechner, Sergiy Ulyashyn, Robin van Kappel, Rolf van der Vlugt, John van den Heuvel, Rolf Timmermans, Stefan Haug, Jonathan Ramirez and Héctor Villanueva López (from left to right in team photo).