Makani Wind Farm
BY: Matthew F ord 1 1
Table Of Contents
Page 4: Foreword Page 6: Location
Page 8: Chapter 1 Page 16: Chapter 2 Page 18: The Machine Shop Page 26: Quotation Page Page 28: Bibliography.
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Foreword
My name is Matthew Ford and I am the author of the Documentary of the Makani wind farm. I am a highschool junior and I began this book to fulfil the Documentary Unit requirement of my Freestyle curriculum at Mountain View High School in Mountain View California. As I became more and embedded in the project and I got deeper into the story of the young and thriving startup, that is Makani, I became emotionally invested in the companies success and possible growth into an industrial scale product. The book you are about to delve into will take you from the inception of an idea to the fruition of that idea and on to the future. Located just outside the Venture capital crazy silicon valley is the Makani wind Farm. The Makani Wind farm is a renewable energy project driven by wind turbine technology. Makani wind farms story will be told through photos and personal interviews, with the most influential people in their short history. The reader will be transported to the mindset of a small startup company in an emerging technology. We will explore the history of Makani, the history of the technology, their connection to Google and the Obama administration along with the personal story of the untimely passing of their founder and CEO Corwin Hardham. We will also delve into the personalities and mindsets of the incredible people in this company that continue to pursue and advance Corwins dream. 4 4
Through the process of writing this book I came to realize the incredible amount of commitment, strength and dedication that it requires to come up with and idea and them to develop the idea, finance and advance it. It is a nail biting thankless experience that one must be overly committed to in order to see it thru. I truly hope you enjoy getting to know the people of Makani and their amazing technology as much as I did. They embody the true entrepreneurial spirit and live their passion every day,and without further adieu; Makani Wind Farms.
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The Location
The first thing you see as you walk through the doors of makani is the original prototype built by the founders. It was modeled after a small plane. This was their first attempt at durable flight, which means they hadn’t even tried to instal any form of electric generation or capture. 6 6
Makani’s location is centered out of a decomishioned naval headquarters. They use this property because of the large, unused airfield. This airfield is used only furing their test flights. The location is prefect for them because the airfield is directly next to the ocean so the strong and consistent winds of the ocean often drift onto the airfield creating a good testing condition.
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Chapter 1 Getting Started
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This concept is a new and innovative approach to both energy and kites. The company’s founders, Corwin Hardham, Don Montague, and Saul Griffith, first met in a college machine shop. While studying and collaborating, they decided that they had a great idea, and thus in 2006 the concept of harnessing wind energy became Makani Wind Farm. The private company was originally founded from money donated by Google’s RE<C (“renewable energy cheaper than coal”) program. The Program gave the leftover money from when google origanally went on to the public trading market.n need of money, the Makani team decided to enter their windharnessing idea in the US Department of Energy administrations’ “ARPA-E Program”
The ARPA-E program offered funding to projects that administrators thought would be promising as a way to create clean, renewable energy sources to help the future of America. Mark Hartney, who at that time currently working for the Department of Energy, recognized the idea and said “it just seemed like they had thought ahead.” ARPA-E saw promise in Makani’s wind-harnessing concept, and went to Google to express how deeply they believed that this idea was one of the best for our country’s future. Even though Google expressed concern over the lack of consistency in Makani’s work, the Department of Energy insisted that the trial-and-error process would soon pay-off. Due to ARPA-E’s efforts, both ARPA-E and Google funded Makani Wind Farm’s next few years, making it possible for more trails and better resources to be at hand. With more resources on hand and a renewed confidence, Makani turned its focus to using different materials to make their Airborne Wind Turbines better and more durable. This focus on durability showed that Mikani was moving toward a future that will likely include offshore wind farming, which is much more rigorous and demanding of equipment.
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The mechanism by which Makani extracts energy, is called “crosswind flight”. For a number of years it has been well-described, but only recently has crosswind flight become a viable technology. This recent breakthrough is as a result of new computer and material advancements. The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) is a tethered “wing” outfitted with turbines. This wing looks similar to a kite, and flies above land between 250 and 600 meters (800-1950 feet) where the wind is stronger and more consistent. The wing operates similarly to a wind turbine. Air moving across the turbine blades forces the blades to rotate, driving a generator to produce electricity. Due to its speed, the tip of a conventional wind turbine is the most effective part of the whole turbine, and is therefore responsible for most of the energy produced. The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine takes advantage of this principle by mounting small turbine generators on a wing that itself acts like the tip of the traditional turbine blade. The wing then travels across the wind like a kite in vertical circles and is fixed to the ground by a tether, again, similar to a kite, but made with much more durable materials and more advanced technology 10 10
. Makani’s turbines are tested and used in what are referred to as “flights”. These flights are times when turbines are in use- meaning, they are converting wind currents into clean cost effective energy. In a process they created, known as “endeavor”, Makani scientists and engineers use carbon, carbon fiber, and more advanced materials in the making of their turbines. The Makani Airborne Wind Turbines, which resemble mini airplanes, are launched when wind speeds reach 3.5 meters per second. Rotors on each blade help propel it into orbit.
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Chapter 2: Their Mission
The Makani Wind Farm’s founders and employees are energy pioneers who have not only realized the true power behind wind, but also expressed that realization to country officials and visualized a concept of how turn it into a reality. Their persistence and effort has pushed their wind-harnessing ideas through stages of trial-and-error to a point where their experience has provided to be the biggest factor in perfecting their new technology. Makani’s makes advancements daily, and with continued improvements the Makani Wind Farm and their “kites” will be one of our future energy sources. “well the goal as with any startup is to replace a big portion of the fossil fuel generation, with a renewable generation. and the good news with this is that we can build these systems with a small amount of material that if we get the technology working well and if we get a reliable cheap utility level product, which i think we will, you can roll out very quickly and it doesn’t take as long as with other renewables to replace a large portion of fossil power.” 16 16
(Damon Vander Lind)
The mission is simple enough but the way the company looks at it, the more difficult part is getting their product into a large scale commercializaed scale. Makani looks toward the possibility of bringing on converted workers from other jobs such as â&#x20AC;&#x153;airplane wing designers, propeller blade makers, and even people who make rigid sails for boats,â&#x20AC;?(Andrea Dunlap) in their quest to continue improving and evolving wind energy techniques. They see potential in bringing in new people and building off of other technology to help make their transition to mass scale production much more obtainable.
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The Machine Shop Makani hand creats all their prototypes and engineers the parts necessary for each flying wing. The shop consists of a laser water jet that they use to cut precise pieces, a high heater smelter to melt and form the carbon fiber to the wing. The shop also is a storgae area for the prototypes and regular equiptment.
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The shop also hold current important eqipment that needs to be protected such as the launching system.
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Quotation Page
With their current success, Makani envisions that in five years they will continue growing, in both a science and company sense, to be building on a commercial scale with factories. Makani Wind Farm has since grown from their 3-person startup into a 22-man team. Known as the world leader in the development of airborne wind power extraction systems, filmer, photographer and general publicist at Makani recalls everywhere the company has appeared: “CNN, Discovery Channel, Scientific American, Nature Magazine... a tiny piece in the New York Times, and Wall Street Journal had a really great piece on us.” (Andrea Dunlap” “They came in as 1 of about 4,000 proposals we got in the first round, and we screened those out and took about 400 that got full proposals, and they were one of those, and they came into a review panel, and the panel was kind of skeptical at first, because they weren’t sure this was technology that would really work, but I really liked and I pushed really hard to get it to be one of the projects we selected.” (Mark Hartney) 26 26
“A turbine that size can generate about maybe 3 to 4 megawatts on a normal plot of land with good wind. But you’re actually getting to the point, where it’s almost pointlessto go any bigger on these. You actually have trouble shipping the blades and the towers to where they are going to get built. You want to go higher because the wind is better higher up. The closer you are to the ground, it is almost like friction, so the higher up you can go, the better the wind is going to be, so Makani has a big advantage in that.” (Mark Hartney) Corwins biggest contribution was probably in his vision, and his commitment to making the project work, and his belief in the technology never faltered, but at the same time he had a very lighthearted edge and if people were stressed out he could immediately diffuse that. its really a frame of mind i guess, he had a really good frame of mind for this. in that thinking, that we are doing something very hard that may or may not work out in the end as the same with all new technologies. but there is certain aspect in which someone goes and tries these new things and the only way to find out is to try, and you satisfy yourself with trying as opposed to succeeding, and i think that attitude was very important for building up the team and the culture we have and it continues to be very important. that fact that he has instilled these values into everyone who is here now. thats very important to us. (Damon Vander Lind) 27 27
Works Cited Hamilton, Tyler. Mad Like Tesla. Underdog Inventors. September 9, 2011 http://madliketesla.com Makani, Andrea. Personal Interview. 16 March 2013 Makani, Damon Vander Lind. Personal Interview. 9 March 2013 SLAC, Mark Hartney. Personal interview. 1 March 2013 Archivalist- Andrea Dunlap http://www.makanipower.com/company-history/
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Brian Clark Howard, Published September 24, 2012 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/09/ Matylda Czarnecka, Techcrunch Monday, January 16th, 2012 http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/16/kite-like-turbines-harness-windpower-at-altitude/ People at Makani (nobody specifically listed) http://www.makanipower.com/how-does-it-work/ pictures/120924-flying-win d-turbines/