The giant of search and increasingly, renewables, is acquiring the developer of an airborne wind turbine concept – a company co-founded by an Australian.
The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) is a tethered wing concept its makers claim eliminates 90% of the material used in conventional wind turbines and can harvest wind energy at higher altitudes.
Said to generate power at up to half the cost of traditional wind turbines, the Makani Wind Turbine has the potential to open up large new areas of wind resource, outside of visually or environmentally sensitive locations.
“In the continental United States alone the AWT can economically access 69% of the landmass, this is over four times the area available to conventional wind,” says Makani.
Able to handle large, sudden shifts in wind speed and direction, the ‘lightning hardened’ turbine flies between 250 and 600 meters above the ground and doesn’t require any more space than conventional turbines. Makani says the entire span of its AWT operates at the tip speed of a conventional turbine, also giving it better low wind performance.
Makani is developing a 600 kW AWT for utility scale power generation at a cost it says will be below conventional solar and wind.
With regard to the acquisition by Google, Makani says it will provide the company with the resources to accelerate its work to make wind energy cost competitive with fossil fuels (which some would argue has already occurred).
“The timing couldn’t be better, as we completed the first ever autonomous all-modes flight with our Wing 7 prototype last week,” says part of the statement.
Co-founder Saul Griffith, a University of New South Wales and University of Sydney graduate, is also involved with 6 other companies; including Otherlab and the hugely popular DIY web site, Instructables.
