Google's acquisition of a kite power generator manufacturer suggests a strong future for the technology.



Google has acquired a Bay Area technology company that generates power through wind turbines attached to robotic kites. The news comes just a couple weeks after the company, Makani Power, completed the first fully autonomous flight of a kite power system.




How flying generators work: the kite flies in a circle, off nothing more than lift and wind, and uses that motion to push air over its propellers, which in turn generate electricity. The energy is then transmitted down a tether attached to a landing station, dubbed the "spar buoy." Makani claims that the system generates more energy than conventional turbines and costs less to build.

Why is Google interested? Google uses a tremendous amount of electricity, and has copped to being a little embarrased by how much fossil fuel it uses. Google actively seeks out renewable energy, and has invested in wind farms before. Efficient, futuristic renewable energy harvested by flying robots? Ideal.

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Google could just stick their datacentre in iceland, 100% geothermal green energy, problem solved.

verneglobal.com

Colt has already gone there, I expected a mass exodus tbh, didn't happen. Quite the puzzle given the circumstances.

That said I do know google has some datacentres in greenland of all the places.

I think it's a cool idea.... but it looks pretty dangerous. What happens if the wind stops or it gets tangled in the power cord? It crashes..
Andy is right there's no need to piss about with new types of renewable energy when geothermal is available.
It's there... provable, working and free..... I think there are some concerns with it though about causing earthquakes by drilling so far down - obviously they don't need to do that in Iceland though so it's a question of how viable it could be elsewhere... and if the oil companies ever let go.

It doesn't cause quakes but it's costly in areas that are not as obviously suitable to it as iceland as it means much more drilling and prep.
Ludicrous amounts of clean energy to be had from it...again profit doesn't figure into the equation so we continue to poison ourselves with oil and gas.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy

Its similar to fracking in a sense but nothing like as drastic, if done right there's no issues, but ofc there's always going to be places where its a bad idea.

I could see the kite device being useful to someone with a small farm or someone trying to be self reliant with their own land but large scale electrical production is that realistic ?

The geothermal energy created in Iceland sounds great.