Slashdot Mirror
Google Acquires Kite-Power Generator
garymortimer writes "Google has acquired a US company that generates power using turbines mounted on tethered kites or wings. Makani Power will become part of Google X – the secretive research and development arm of the search giant. The deal comes as Makani carries out the first fully autonomous flights of robot kites bearing its power-generating propellers. Google has not said how much it paid to acquire Makani, but it has invested $15m (£9.9m) in the company previously."
To the comment "go fly a kite"
what is this string theory attached to ? .....
bæ8Ã0sÃOE?5r©oÂÃ?âz:ÃÃAÃ?ÃOEÂ6fXÃ?]Â
Makani Power will become part of Google X – the secretive research and development arm of the search giant.
Yeah, real secretive. Hence how this story has been hushed up. I did hear a rumour they were working on a driverless car and a haed mounted display too but haven't been able to back any of it up. They're like techno-ninjas.
Join this power-generating capability with Google's recent initiative to provide internet access to sub-Sarahan Africa via blimp: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/26/google-blimps ...and you've got a robust, uninterruptable combination for internet access in the poorest, and the most corrupt nations in the world. Under such circumstances, Google will have great communicative and, perhaps most interestingly, surveillance power over the people under these oppressive governments. It should be interesting how such absolute power, so closely aligned with government interests, affects Google's behavior.
Of course, it could be that Google simply feels these citizens represent a huge market for targeted advertisements for tablet PCs and Lexus vehicles.
even if it didn't generate any electricity.
you could put your turbine on a fixed pole, so it doesn't come down when the wind stops blowing.
Would that not cause the cable to kink up after enough rotations?
Gotta say, the idea of viable power generation by flying swarms of kites sounds downright steampunk as balls, and I fucking love it.
I really don't see how you can generate enough power to keep the aircraft in the air, and have extra power to spare and send back to the ground. A kite, ok, maybe. But they say this flying wing flies in circles. So it stays aloft and generates power. How high can it actually go anyway? It still is dragging a cord back to the ground. Every foot higher is another foot of cord it has to support. I would think it would be much simplier to create a modified wind turbine that can come down safely when the wind starts blowing too hard instead of creating some sort of 'perpetual motion' machine that creates energy.
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
This sounds interesting, but is anyone familiar with plans or devices that do the same thing, except in the 10 to 100 Watt range that you could carry in, or strapped to, a backpack?
In this brief talk, Saul Griffith unveils the invention his new company Makani Power has been working on: giant kite turbines that create surprising amounts of clean, renewable energy.
They have been doing demos at small scale, but to really pay out big it needs to be done at much larger scale - as the line drag becomes a smaller and smaller loss the bigger you go and the wind stronger the higher they get. Given that most of their challenges are control system related solving them in small scale means the scale up should be far less risky (flying kites is really really hard compared to aircraft etc due to dominating and unknowable future variance of wind speed and direction)
And if you look at it from a simple cost of materials point of view the systems will be far less than 10% the weight of the turbines they replace, while the wind power flux they can access is several times as high at the altitudes they are aiming at. They are predicting less than half the cost of existing wind energy, but might end up even lower.
Fundamentally there is nothing preventing 10's or even eventually 100's of MW per wing, and its a lot easier to stick out at sea or in other tricky geographical locations than trying to assemble the current huge turbines and their towers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1248068.stm
It is old ass news but the concept is correct. The jet stream is better than the surface. Don't worry about commercial airlines they run 10k feet lower.
Look at the space and structure required. Now consider the fragility and lack of stability as compared to a standard wind turbine in the same spot.
How could anyone seriously consider this idea to be better than a standard wind turbine?
Oh! By the way, the company's co-founder died unexpectedly 7 months ago.
Not that Google cares about this tiny bit of money, but this is wasted money, to be sure.
Makani Power will become part of Google X – the secretive research and development arm of the search giant
Google X is Sergei's play thing. Maybe he has an inferiority complex from taking second place in a science fair, or it's just that billionaire's can afford cool hobbies. I know I'm being a wet blanket, but this seems very tenuously related to anything Google is involved in. I think it's fascinating tech, but I'm skeptical that Google X is a real industrial research lab as opposed to a cool hobby and a good way to get more of what Google thrives on: hype.
Check here CBSE X Class Results 2013 Chennai Region 2013 CBSE 10th Results 2013
Que the Benjamin Franklin posts in 3... 2... 1...
sergey, larry and that bozo-in-charge now, eric schmidt to 'go fly a kite' whenever google does or says something stupid... which is about every other day it seems, now.
...seen 50 years ago in some french Sci-Fi magazine.
I read around ten years ago about another scheme involving kites. The kites would be louvred (for want of a better word) and the wind would act on them to unwind their tethers which were attached to dynamos. Once a kite reached the end of its tether, the louvres would be opened and the kite could be wound back in - using energy, but less than was generated in the unwinding. Or that was the theory, anyway.
This seems a more elegant solution.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
... isn't the kite.
It's how to get the power to the ground. You need a cable with capabilities that hasn't been invented yet....
as "Google X – the secretive arms research and development department of the search giant"
Small and light enough and I can see people with boats getting them. There's only so much deck space for solar panels and not a lot of room for windmills. The name of the game there is burning less fuel, so a few windy days and one calm one is still a win.
We're not exactly talking space elevators here. Makani's system will be feasible even with current materials (i.e. dyneema), although they will indeed probably be using carbon fiber tethers by the time they commercialize. They do conversion to HVDC onboard the kite, so the electrical conductors embedded in the tether can be very thin and still carry a lot of power.
This can not at all be extrapolated to economic scales.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Well, I'm willing to admit when I'm proven to be wrong. So, far, a small group of people who seem to be shills or space elevator fantasy types say I'm wrong. But, despite Google's money, standard wind turbines remain the wind generation tech of choice.
So far, reality says; I'm right, you're...