Makani Power

Flight Demonstrations—Update from Corwin

andrea — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:11:31 +0000

At the end of September 2010, ARPA-E granted Makani the funds to develop Wing 7, a small scale prototype of our megawatt airborne wind turbine design. What followed over the next eighteen months was a combination of hard work and inspiring results.… Read more

Ask Damon: Power Curve

andrea — Thu, 03 May 2012 04:42:20 +0000

Our Chief Engineer, Damon Vander Lind, explains what a power curve is and why ours is interesting:

A power curve shows how much power a wind generation device can make at any given wind speed. A large part of the Makani system design effort, and a large focus of traditional turbine design, is improving power generation in low winds.… Read more

Peter Kinne’s H-tail test sketches

andrea — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:25:07 +0000

For our last newsletter we began a series of photographs documenting the notebooks of the Makani staff. The project was inspired by the journals of inventor Alexander Graham Bell as seen in the Library of Congress archives which document his work with kites in the early twentieth century (among other things).… Read more

NX Review

andrea — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:22:37 +0000

At Makani Power we do all of our mechanical design using a CAD/CAM program developed by Siemens called NX. We were introduced to NX through our friends at Natel Energy and its use has allowed us to streamline our design process.… Read more

Wind Visualizations

andrea — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:15:25 +0000

Using surface wind data from the National Digital Forecast Database, the team of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg created a remarkably beautiful vision of wind data in near real-time.… Read more

VICE and Ecomagination video

andrea — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:12:41 +0000

VICE magazine and GE’s ecomagination team began a video series on energy innovation by featuring the work of ARPA-E, the Department of Energy’s project to fund transformative clean-tech enterprises.… Read more

Industry: The Pew Clean Energy Report

andrea — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:10:38 +0000

Earlier this month the Pew Charitable Trusts published their 2011 edition of “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?“ This report details the current state of clean energy investment in the G-20 countries, including investment in wind, small hydro, biomass, solar, geothermal and marine energy.… Read more

New York Times

andrea — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:56:23 +0000

In the NYT Green blog, an article about projects at the 2012 ARPA-E Innovation Summit highlights the Makani technology.

“…the Makani bird does not fly from place to place. It is tethered to the ground with a cable, and it flies in circles in a path like the outer diameter of a Ferris wheel.… Read more

All Flight Modes

andrea — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:06:57 +0000

As Makani nears the close of its ARPA-E phase 1 development program, all flight modes of the AWT have now been demonstrated by Wing 7, a 30 kW prototype of a utility scale product. This prototype proves the functionality of the AWT and demonstrates the feasibility of Makani’s vision.… Read more

Reuters: Kite company takes wind power to new heights

andrea — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:23:48 +0000

Reporter Ben Gruber does a nice job with this interview. (filmed on a 5d!).

Kite company takes wind power to new heights (2:27)

Feb. 20 – California-based startup Makani Power believes the future of clean, sustainable energy is in the skies.… Read more