I worked on a project with my dad
about 30 years ago to develop airplane-shaped kites as a means of power
generation.
Over a period of several years in
the late 1970's to early 1980's, my dad and I built and tested a variety of kites.
These included 2-foot wingspan kites that we flew by hand on 2 lines, as well
as 6-foot wingspan kites that I flew on one line using radio control. As
a result of that flight-testing and much computer time on a very early home
computer, in 1980 my dad wrote an article called “Crosswind Kite Power” that was
published in the Journal of Energy:
The publication of this technical
article got the attention of editors at Smithsonian magazine, who ran an
article about new uses for kites. My dad
and I were interviewed and a photo of me flying a 30-inch wingspan two-line
airplane-shaped kite was included in the article. This was published in June, 1982.
Funding for wind energy research
was not available, so power generation using kites had to wait until a company
called Makani Power read my dad's Journal of Energy article and has continued to pursue research in large-scale power generation using
kites. Here is Saul Griffith, then leader of Makani, in a 2009 TED talk:
Here's Makani now:
The genesis of the original
Crosswind Kite Power article is described in a talk at Stanford in 2010 at the
airborne wind energy conference:
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