Airloom Promises To Slash Wind Power Costs, Attracts Investment From Bill Gates

Bill Gates has backed Airloom Energy, a Wyoming-based wind energy startup, which claims to have created a technology which claims to slash wind turbine costs by nearly 70%. Founded by Robert Lumley, Airloom is led by Neal Rickner, who has also spent time (nearly a decade) at Google and Google[x] leading teams, most notably serving as the Chief Operating Officer of Makani, a next-generation wind-turbine company owned by Alphabet and Shell.

While energy costs from wind turbines have come down massively as more and larger wind farms have come online, the turbines generating the power have remained expensive. A standard utility-scale 2.5 MW horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) can cost roughly $2.1 million, according to an example cited on the Airloom website.

Airloom’s system on the other hand comes in at just under $225000 for a 2.5 MW system, reducing costs by nearly 90%. The startup estimates that an entire 20MW AirLoom wind farm would cost less than $6 million, about 25% of what a conventional one would cost.

The cost savings are due to Airloom’s vastly smaller size and intuitive design that resembles a racetrack, with several 82-foot poles suspending the track in the air. A number of 33-foot blades, or wings, are placed evenly along the oval-shaped track, propelled by air currents to generate energy.

AirLoom wings are smaller but look to make up the difference in lost efficiency by utilizing generators that spin at 5000 rpm, compared to 12 rpm for traditional wind turbines, as stated by a video on the Airloom website.

Cost savings can also be attributed to the device using “human scale parts” that are easier to manufacture and transport. Readers wil be aware that transporting blades for the current generation of wind turbines is one of the bigger tasks in establishing a wind farm.

AirLoom’s smaller parts will help remedy this. According to Airloom, an entire 2.5MW AirLoom could be transported in one standard tractor trailer.

The startup plans to use the $4 million it received in seed funding from Bill Gates’ investment firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures to further the R&D of its 50 kW prototype.

Airloom’s future plans include scaling up the system, building tracks up to 1300 feet long for 1MW systems. It also looks to generate hundreds of megawatts in industrial-scale wind farms.

While the company is still in the prototyping phase, if the prototype is successful, it could be a game-changer for the wind power industry, helping to drive down energy costs massively.