Catamaran as a sailing power plant: increasing speed parameters

Installations that convert kinetic wind energy into electricity, including floating wind turbines, are large due to the low air density. The authors propose a sailing power plant that converts energy of the wind flow into energy of the water flow, which is used to generate electricity. That makes it possible to reduce the size of the energy converter. A model of a sailing power plant was created. It was madeas catamaran-wise, symmetrical with respect to the bow and stern, which makes cyclical movements along an arc of a circle in an angular interval specified with respect to the direction of the wind. Laboratory studies showed the fundamental feasibility ofthe installation, thoughits implementation requires to solve a number of problems, in particular, to determine design solutions to increase the speed of the catamaran. There were createdseveral versions of the catamaran model of different weights, with a different number of masts and sail areas, with which experimental studies were carried out. The article presents the results of these studies.