spowerei
Joined 5 years ago
Joined 5 years ago
I am curious, do you know why Makani went 100% 'fly-gen'? From by biased point of view I would say that it was easier to bootstrap (more control agency, easier take off and landing) but harder to scale.
I tried to skim through the 1k+ pages 3 part report available from Makani (https://x.company/projects/makani/), but it doesn't seem to speak much about the considerations which when into that early design choice. Do you know more?
Is it possible to summarize them or it's an organic set of reasons which cannot be untangled nor simplified like often happen when dealing with complex systems?
[Mechanical Engineer here]
Flying things need to be lightweight.
Electrical generators are heavy.
Makani: Ok I will build a flying generator ... :thinking:
Related Keywords:
- Airborne wind energy (AWE) (the name of the field)
- Fly-gen (mechanical to electrical conversion happens in the sky)
- Ground-gen (mechanical to electrical conversion happens on the ground)
Other resources worth of attention:
- On the edge, possibly near to commercialization: https://www.ampyxpower.com, ...
- Commercial solutions: https://thekitepower.com/, ...
- Project similar to the one linked (rigid wing): https://www.someawe.org, it also have a nice conceptual map style overview of the field https://www.someawe.org/awe-map-the-someaweorg-airborne-wind...
- Forum with knowledgeable people on AWE: https://forum.awesystems.info/
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"possibly near to commercialization"->"they have something flying"
Many others should be mentioned, i.e. https://www.kitemill.com/