Makani’s time as an “other bet” comes to an end

We are grateful to all the people and organizations who have supported our team and facilitated our radical approach to harnessing wind energy. In particular we’d like to thank ARPA-E, who funded the development of our 20kW demonstrator kite; Alphabet, who incubated us for seven years, and Shell; who supported us as we transitioned our energy kite system offshore. Their willingness to embrace audacity and uncertainty gave us the resources to meet our challenges head-on for over a decade.

Developing energy kites is an incredibly hard problem, and our progress has been possible thanks to the Makani team, whose creativity, passion and drive are matched by their technical depth and breadth. I am grateful to have been a part of the team, and proud of what Makani has accomplished.

To achieve a clean energy future we need to be open to exploring a diverse array of new renewable energy technologies, and that means pushing bold new ideas as far as possible, sometimes without a clear roadmap. I am proud of our team’s dedication to expanding access to renewable energy, and I believe that Makani’s journey is an example of the level of commitment, calculated risk-taking, and hard work that are the right building blocks for creating technical solutions to climate change.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/3bOdbye