WINDLIFT ENERGY 2/2
THE BIG PRINCIPLE COMPACTED EFFICIENTLY
It’s been 120 years since the Wright brothers pioneered aviation on the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The anniversary coincides with a new course set for a company just a few hours from that beach. Windlift is making the move into the production of airborne power generators (APGs). We’re taking another look here because it’s a sure bet we will be hearing a lot more about how their system – autonomous flight software-driven drones - disrupts the industry.
It all seems very fitting because their airplane-shaped, quadrotor drones are based on those principles of flight. Advanced power electronics, machine learning, and composite design are thrown in for a recipe for wind energy generation that uses 90% less materials, reduces the levelized cost of energy by half, and substantially reduces carbon emissions.
A lot of development – thousands of simulated versions – went into transforming a propellor that produces thrust to the drag needed for turbine blades, and moving beyond the randomness of a tethered energy collector to an optimized flight path.
While that’s fascinating, a striking thing about Windlift is the thought that goes into useability. Maybe systems that are shockingly expensive and time-consuming to implement are part of the learning curve. Maybe Windlift will prove that theory wrong.
Puerto Rico is an example. Struggles with an aging, undermaintained power grid came to a head in 2017 after Hurricane Maria. Just months before, the power authority declared bankruptcy. It would be 11 months before power was completely restored.
We’re all thinking at this point, ‘How do we still let pockets of humanity suffer like that?’
Our next thought had better be, ‘What about renewables?’
Instead of the estimated $20B to rehab its grid, offshore wind would be a good plan for the island, except for one little thing.
It is just one of the many places around the world, Creighton says, that doesn’t have the resources to install the $2 billion port facility needed to build wind farms with traditional turbines. And specialized “liftboats” to “plant” them into the ocean floor can cost half a billion dollars.
Windlift’s “portability” – buoys and components designed to fit within an ordinary shipping container is the game-changer. It’s not surprising their research dollar have come primarily from the US military. This is the answer to many of their needs and is expected to be lifesaving in ways surprising to us civilians. On the battlefield, a large number of casualties are related to delivering fuel to the tactical edge.
An IDIQ – indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity – contract was signed recently with the US Naval Research Laboratory, capped at $30 million over the next five years. To start, Creighton said they will provide small, distributed units that will operate right on that edge. Looking ahead, they will aim to address the increasing electrical needs of military operations, like surveillance drones and EVs.
In our next post, we’ll take a look at another disruptor, poised to make a breakthrough in battery tech, and powering its massive facilities entirely by wind energy.
