While conventional wind power pushes itself further and further into the commercial sphere, there are still those focusing on attempts to disrupt the entire industry. This week, Germany utility RWE tapped SkySails Power to trial its airborne wind energy (AWE) technology in a three-year pilot, which will hope to breathe life back into a subsector which has been home to several casualties over recent years. RWE’s new partnership with SkySails plans to harness power from a 120 square-meter kite, flying at a height of 400 meters above the ground in a figure of eight motion, spooling and unspooling coils of its line to spin generators for electricity production. Essentially, as the kite is lifted, it pulls rope from a winch,…