I spent a week in Maui at the MaiTai Kite camp doing some kiteboarding and networking with a bunch of high-tech entrepreneurs, VCs and professional kiteboarders in May. Part-time VC (:-) I just had to say that Bill) and MaiTai co-founder, BIll Tai, did a great job organizing guest speakers including
Neil Pryde, the father of windsurfing. But the most fascinating talk was listening to the guys from
Makani Power - Corwin Hardham(CTO) and Don Montague (co-founder and well known kite designer). These guys have a vision to harness high-altitude wind energy using kite like structures to help power our planet. They cite that in 2006 less than 2% of the world's energy consumption was supplied by renewable sources.
Along with solar, wind represents the only renewable source of energy that is substantially larger than the world's current energy needs. Moreover, of all of the renewable energy technologies (wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal), high-altitude wind has the largest energy per square foot. Capturing a small fraction of the global high-altitude wind energy flux could be sufficient to supply the current energy needs of the globe.
The Makani team have begun building early versions of the system and they have been testing it in Maui. The boys from Google (kitesurfers themselves) have funded Makani to date but I believe Makani are starting to look for further funding now. Check out this short video of Saul Griffith (co-founder and chief scientist) delivering the Makani pitch as a TED Talk.
Posted via email from Mark Cunningham's Posterous
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