Makani Power
| File:Makani Power logo.svg | |
| Private | |
| Industry | Wind Energy |
| Founded | 2006 |
|
Key people
|
Saul Griffith, Corwin Hardham, Donald Montague, Damon Vander Lind |
|
Number of employees
|
20+ |
| Slogan | High Capacity Wind |
| Website | Google.com/Makani |
Makani Power is an Alameda, California-based company that developed airborne wind turbines with the support of Google X and the U.S. Department of Energy office of ARPA-E. Makani is a leader in the development of airborne wind power extraction systems.[1] Makani was founded in 2006 by Saul Griffith, Don Montague, and Corwin Hardham.[2] It received funding as part of Google.org's Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal (RE<C) initiative.[3] "Makani" is Hawaiian for "wind."[4] One of the founders, Corwin Hardham, died in 2012 at age 38.[5]
Mechanical progress for their kite system
In order to meet its goal of producing low-cost renewable energy, the Makani kite-energy system uses autonomous tethered wings which fly in a circular path and generate electricity via wind turbines mounted upon the main wing, a method already in public domain; expert Miles Loyd in 1980 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;[6] many of Makani Power competitors have generators kept on the ground, like KiteGen, Italy.[7] The electricity is transmitted to the ground via an electrical cable within the kite's tether.[8] Several patent applications have been made; some have been granted.
On May 23, 2013, Makani Power was acquired by Google and will be folded into Google X.[9]
References
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- ↑ http://www.ibabuzz.com/alamedajournal/2012/10/26/service-for-late-makani-power-ceo-scheduled/
- ↑ Miles Loyd, 1980: http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~highwind/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Loyd1980.pdf
- ↑ AWES Museum http://www.energykitesystems.net/AWESMuseum/index.html || KiteGen http://kitegen.com/
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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External links
- Use dmy dates from January 2016
- Use Indian English from January 2016
- All Wikipedia articles written in Indian English
- Pages with broken file links
- Renewable energy companies
- Kites
- Wind energy organizations
- Companies based in Alameda, California
- Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
- Energy companies established in 2006
- Renewable resource companies established in 2006
- 2006 establishments in California
- Google acquisitions
