Management Team

Don Montague, co-Founder

Don Montague, co-Founder and interim CEO
holds multiple patents and patents-pending on innovations in both sports and energy systems. During his tenure as Head Sail Designer at Gaastra Sails and, subsequently, as Head of R&D for Naish International, he was responsible for innovations in design and manufacturing.

Damon Vander Lind

Damon Vander Lind, Chief Engineer
leads the engineering team at Makani Power. He holds degrees in physics and electrical engineering/computer science from MIT, and has been responsible for many aerodynamic, electromechanical, and structural elements at Makani including the system architecture currently being tested, quiet hybrid turbine/propeller blades, and a predictive controller, which have led to numerous patents pending.

Eric Chin, Avionics

Eric Chin, Avionics Team Lead
is an Electrical Engineer who designs avionics systems at Makani. He has a Masters degree from Stanford, and studied as an undergraduate at the University of Idaho where he was involved in several NASA microgravity research projects. Prior to joining the team at Makani, he worked on telemetry systems at Sandia National Laboratories.

Geoffrey Dolan, Energy Systems

Geoffrey Dolan, Energy Systems Team Lead
is responsible for the development of Makani’s lightweight power electronics. He previously worked on data chain design for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission and control systems for electrosurgery generators and microfluidic valves. He has also designed electronics for motor drives and  for high-power, high-voltage medical devices.

Paula Echeverri, Testing

Paula Echeverri, Testing Team Lead
is an aerospace engineer from MIT with advanced degrees in both mechanical and ocean engineering. Her PhD work on ocean dynamics honed her skills to effectively collect and process data in non-ideal
conditions at sea, which she applies to the Makani testing program. Paula has published several articles on the development and experimental validation of analytic models of geophysical systems.

Brian Hachtmann, Ground Station Team Lead
is responsible for the development of integrated ground station platforms for Wing 7 and future Makani Power systems. He holds degrees from Cal Poly and Stanford, where he focused on Mechatronics, Biomechanics, and Design. Prior to Makani he developed key patented battery design and battery manufacturing technologies at Tesla Motors critical to the development and release of the Model S.

Kenneth Jensen, Control Systems

Kenneth Jensen, Control Systems Team Lead
is a physicist specializing in the development of sensing technologies with advanced degrees from MIT and U.C. Berkeley. His patented work has won numerous awards, including the TR10 Emerging Technologies Award, and has been featured on the covers of publications ranging from Nature Nanotechnology to Scientific American.

Rob Nelson, Structures

Robert Nelson, Structures Team Lead
has a background in heavy machinery, construction, and fabrication. He played a key role in the development of three deployable testing platforms and contributed to the development of an autonomous flight controller as a system test pilot.

Alex Wickersham, Pylon Team Lead

Alex Wickersham, Pylon Team Lead
graduated with his mechanical engineering degree from UC Santa Barbara and specializes in aeronautic composites. Prior to Makani, he worked at Joby Energy where he assembled prototypes, integrated avionics and supported the testing team.

Alden Woodrow, Business Team Lead
directs Makani’s strategy, business development, finance, and partnership efforts. He previously worked for a power project developer financing utility-scale wind farms, and as an economic and environmental consultant on topics ranging from climate policy to dog house manufacturing. Alden is a graduate of Middlebury College and holds an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

  • AWT

    A wind based energy generation device with at least one airborne element. The Makani AWT consists of a rigid wing with mounted turbines that flies in circles across the wind at 300 meters (1,000 feet) above ground level.x

    Airborne Wind Turbine

    A wind based energy generation device with at least one airborne element. The Makani AWT consists of a rigid wing with mounted turbines that flies in circles across the wind at 300 meters (1,000 feet) above ground level.x

    Airborne Wind Turbines

    A wind based energy generation device with at least one airborne element. The Makani AWT consists of a rigid wing with mounted turbines that flies in circles across the wind at 300 meters (1,000 feet) above ground level.x

    Autonomous Controller

    An on-board computer that controls the flight path of the wing by changing the position of the control flaps.x

    Avionics

    The electronic backbone of the AWT. Avionics include the sensors, actuators, controllers and communication systems that keep the wing flying on its desired path.x

    Capacity factor

    The average power output divided by the name plate power output of a power plant. Capacity factor demonstrates the frequency with which a power plant is running at its name plate capacity.x

    COE

    Cost of Energy or the total cost to generate energy that is fed into the grid.

    Firming Power

    The outside power generation needed to stabilize the flow of electricity to the grid when an inconsistent resource, like wind or solar, creates less electricity than needed.x

    Ground Station

    The base station for the AWT, includes a winch for retrieval of the wing and storage of the tether.x

    Car vs. AWT

    A typical compact car weighs about 1.2 tons and produces about 30 kW during the 10 seconds it takes to slow from 25 m/s (50 mph) to a stop. Each cubic meter (~1.2 cubic yards) of air weighs only .0012 tons and a good wind day might be traveling at 25 mph (11 m/s), so Wing 7 would have to to interact with 350 cubic meters of air (about 23 dump trucks worth) every second to extract an equal amount of power. In reality it is not as efficient to design an AWT to completely halt the air it interacts with, so we design our AWTs to exert a smaller force on an even larger body of air.x

    Material efficiency

    Material efficiency refers to how much power is output in relation to the raw material needed for construction of the generator.x

    Rated power

    The amount of power a plant delivers when operating at full capacity.x

    Rated capacity

    The amount of power a plant delivers when operating at full capacity.x

    Rotors

    The rotors capture the accelerated wind as it rushes across the wing and convert it into electrical power with small, direct drive generators. The hybrid rotors can act as propellers as well as turbines, allowing the wing to stay aloft if the wind dies.x

    Turbines

    The rotors capture the accelerated wind as it rushes across the wing and convert it into electrical power with small, direct drive generators. The hybrid rotors can act as propellers as well as turbines, allowing the wing to stay aloft if the wind dies.x

    Tether

    The tether is made of high strength fibers surrounding a conductive core. The tether carries the traction force of the wing and transmits the electrical power to the ground station.x

    Tethered

    The tether is made of high strength fibers surrounding a conductive core. The tether carries the traction force of the wing and transmits the electrical power to the ground station.x

    Usable land

    Factors that influence whether land is usable include site geography, ecology, and wind patterns, for example. x