Makani (company)


Makani Technologies LLC was an Alameda, California-based company that developed airborne wind turbines.
Makani was a leader in the development of airborne wind power extraction systems.

History

Makani was founded in 2006 by Saul Griffith, Don Montague, and Corwin Hardham. It received funding as part of Google.org's Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal initiative. "Makani" is Hawaiian for "wind." Corwin Hardham died in 2012 at age 38. On May 23, 2013, Makani Power was acquired by Google and was folded into Google X. In 2015, Fort Felker, former director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory was hired as CEO.
In February 2019, Makani was separated from X and made into a subsidiary of Alphabet. At the same time, Royal Dutch Shell made a minority investment in Makani and has begun a partnership with the company to develop its business.
In February 2020, Alphabet dropped Makani.
In June 2020, Makani’s assets began to appear online available for public auction.

Technology

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 known as crosswind kite power, originally envisioned by Miles Lloyd 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, Italy. The electricity is transmitted to the ground via an electrical cable within the kite's tether. Several patent applications have been made; some have been granted.
In December 2016, Makani operated for the first time a 600 kW prototype with 28 meter wing span.
Since August 2018, Makani has operated an energy kite test site on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Mishaps

In 2019 the offshore energy kite was lost during testing. Investigation and reporting the technical details of the mishap are underway. The wing did not successfully land on the platform resulting in the loss of the energy kite.