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Makani (company) facts for kids

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Makani Technologies LLC
Subsidiary
Industry Wind power
Founded 2006
Defunct 19 February 2020 (2020-02-19)
Key people
Saul Griffith, Corwin Hardham, Donald Montague, Damon Vander Lind
Number of employees
20+
Parent Alphabet Inc.

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. Founded in 2006, Makani was acquired by Google in May 2013. In February 2020, Makani was shut down by Alphabet, Google's parent company.

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. Lloyd 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.

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