Google kite? Tech giant buys 'flying windmill' firm Makani.

Google X, the company's secretive research and development arm, has acquired Makani Power, a California-based developer of airborne wind power. Google's purchase of Makani Power reflects the company's interest in renewables and energy innovation.

|
Paul Sakuma/AP/File
Makani employees carry a Makani Airborne Wind Turbine for testing at Sherman Island, Calif. Google has acquired Makani Power, the company that makes the tethered, flying wing that generates power as it loops through the sky.

Google has set its sights on an unexpected target: a tethered, flying wing that generates power as it loops through the sky.

The tech industry giant has acquired Makani Power, a California-based developer of airborne wind power – essentially wind turbines without the pole.

Google has long shown interest in clean energy, but mostly as a cost-efficient, environmentally friendly way to power its own operations. Renewables make up 30 percent of its energy use, according to Google, and the company hopes to install enough solar panels and buy enough wind power to go completely carbon-free.

Now, Google X, the company's secretive research and development arm, is taking a vested interest in directly powering what could be a part of the clean-energy future. 

"Google X is focused on real atoms and not bits," Larry Page, Google's chief executive, said during the company's developers conference earlier this month. "Part of why is they feel there’s a lot of opportunity there."

Makani's Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) is a tethered wing measuring about 26 feet across with turbines that act as either generators or propellers. During takeoff the propellers launch the craft from a perch to anywhere between 800 and 1,950 feet above the ground. Think of a kite that makes a vertical loop in the sky. The AWT loops much the same way, mimicking the path of a traditional wind turbine. The wing-mounted rotors become generators, converting the rush of the wind across the wing into electricity.

Makani has developed a prototype capable of generating 30 kilowatts of power. It hopes to create a 600-kilowatt AWT for utility scale generation at a cost below conventional solar and wind. The AWTs could be clustered in the same way traditional turbines make up wind farms.

The payoff could be big. Wind is stronger the higher and bigger you build, but traditional turbines are limited by the mast that holds them aloft. Makani's AWT, and other experiments in airborne wind power, free the turbine from some of its current engineering limits. The AWT flies higher than a traditional turbine and covers a greater diameter. It also uses less than 10 percent of the mass of a conventional turbine and is a fraction of the size. 

Combine those advantages and you get a turbine that, according to Makani, could produce 50 percent more energy at half the cost of a traditional turbine. Throwing the resources of Google behind the project certainly can't hurt:

"This formalizes a long and productive relationship between our two companies, and will provide Makani with the resources to accelerate our work to make wind energy cost competitive with fossil fuels," the company wrote in a reaction to the acquisition on its website.

Of course, that could take a while, if it comes at all. The path to viable clean energy is paved with failed, fanciful ideas. Indeed, Mr. Page seems to encourage it. 

Astro Teller, the director of Google X, recounted what Google's chief said to him when proposing the acquisition of Makani: “He said we could have the budget and the people to go do this,” Mr. Teller told Bloomberg Businessweek in a story this week about Google X, “but that we had to make sure to crash at least five of the devices in the near future.”

Makani's prototype raises some concerns about conflict with air traffic, but the craft would remain well below normal commercial and civilian air traffic, the company says. Some criticize the death toll inflected on birds by wind turbines, but Makani says its AWT flies above most birds and its absence of a tower discourages nesting.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Google kite? Tech giant buys 'flying windmill' firm Makani.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0523/Google-kite-Tech-giant-buys-flying-windmill-firm-Makani
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe