Makani Technologies LLC was an Alameda, California-based company that developed

airborne wind turbines An airborne wind turbine is a design concept for a wind turbine with a rotor supported in the air without a tower, thus benefiting from the higher velocity and persistence of wind at high altitudes, while avoiding the expense of tower construction ...

. Founded in 2006, Makani was acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

in May 2013. In February 2020, Makani was shut down by Alphabet, Google's parent company.

History

Makani was founded in 2006 by

Saul Griffith Saul Griffith (born 1974) is an Australian-American inventor and renewable electricity advocate. He is the founder or co-founder of multiple companies, including Otherlab (where he is currently CEO), Makani Power, and Instructables. Education ...

, Don Montague, and Corwin Hardham. It received funding as part of

Google.org Google.org, founded in October 2005, is the charitable arm of Google, a multinational technology company. The organization has committed roughly US$100 million in investments and grants to nonprofits annually. The organization is noted for se ...

's Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal (REHawaiian for "wind." Corwin Hardham died in 2012 at age 38. On 23 May 2013, Makani Power was acquired by

and was folded into Google X. In 2015,

Fort Felker A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

, former director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was hired as CEO. In December 2016, Makani operated for the first time a 600 kW prototype with 28 meter wing span. Starting August 2018, Makani operated an energy kite test site on the

Big Island of Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii ) is the List of islands of the United States by area, largest island in the United States, located in the U.S. state, state of Hawaii. It is the southeasternmost of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of High island, volcanic ...

. In February 2019, Makani was separated from X and made into a subsidiary of

Alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...

. At the same time,

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...

made a minority investment in Makani and began a partnership with the company to develop its business. In 2019 the offshore energy kite was lost during testing. Investigation and reporting on the technical details of the mishap was undertaken. The wing did not successfully land on the platform resulting in the loss of the energy kite. In February 2020, Alphabet shut down Makani. The company said "Despite strong technical progress, the road to commercialization is longer and riskier than hoped." In September 2020, Makani released the Energy Kite Collection — a three-part report and accompanying collection of open source code repositories, flight logs and technical videos from the project. It also released ''Pulling Power from the Sky: The Story of Makani'', a documentary on the project, and made a non-assertion pledge on its patent portfolio, allowing anyone to use its patents without fear of legal reprisal.

Technology

In order to meet its goal of producing low-cost

renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...

, the Makani kite-energy system used autonomous tethered wings which flew in a circular path and generated electricity via wind turbines mounted upon the main wing, a method known as

crosswind kite power Crosswind kite power is power derived from a class of airborne wind-energy conversion systems (AWECS, also AWES) or crosswind kite power systems (CWKPS). The kite system is characterized by energy-harvesting parts flying transverse to the directio ...

, originally envisioned by Miles Loyd in a 1980 paper. Loyd stated that for large scale purposes flying the generators was expected to be disfavored because of the need to fly the mass of the generators; many of Makani Power competitors have generators kept on the ground, like

KiteGen KiteGen is a concept for a wind harnessing machine for high altitude winds, developed in Italy. The vertical axis rotation is intended to eliminate the static and dynamic problems that limit the size of conventional wind turbines. The prototype S ...

, Italy. The electricity is generated on the ground in the tether, utilising tension in the cable connected to the kite.

References

External links

Official website
* {{Alphabet Inc. Kites Airborne wind power Wind turbine manufacturers Companies based in Alameda, California Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area American companies established in 2006 Renewable resource companies established in 2006 2006 establishments in California Google acquisitions Wind power companies of the United States X (company) Alphabet Inc. subsidiaries 2013 mergers and acquisitions

History

Technology

See also

References

External links