GoogleX is ramping up
its plan to fill the sky with Energy Kites by recruiting larger number of people at
Makani. In the past few months, Google has posted more than 30 job openings on
the company’s linked page indicating that the team is growing rapidly.
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| Image credits:BusinessInsider.in |
These energy kites can produce over 50% more energy using
90% lesser resources. Makani was acquired by Google in 2013 and joined Google’s Moonshot lab-Google X and had
also received funding from Google several years before.
This product is in the lines of Google X fashion which are
usually Uncomfortably Ambitious and plans to use the same principles of
Aerodynamics that are used to produce electricity in typical wind turbines. A
major difference is that it will use lesser amounts of steel and would be able
to capitalize on more wind thrust and power as these kites would hover at
higher altitudes as compared to the wind turbines.
Makani started testing a 600 KW energy kite in Alameda
California during this year and has been
testing earlier of its machines in Hawaai since 2008.
Here are the areas where wind speeds reach productive
levels for traditional 100 meter turbines, versus Makani's kites, which reach
250 meters:
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| Image credits:BusinessInsider.in |
With this initiative Google X has been trying to solve a
major problem of Energy generation though wind as although Wind has been a
source of Energy through decades but only 3% of the world energy consumption comes
through wind power.