Bill Gates-Backed Group Secures Funding for New Wind Energy Project
A startup company whose investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the group led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said it has received about $14 million in new funding in support of a pilot project in Wyoming.
Airloom Energy has said its technology is prepared to “revolutionize” wind power through the company’s new design for wind turbines, based on horizontal-axis principles. The company said its Wyoming project will show Airloom’s turbines can be built at a much lower cost than conventional horizontal-axis turbines, with the pilot designed to prove the technology’s power production and system efficiency.
Airloom on October 8 announced it has secured $7.5 million in financing led by Lowercarbon Capital, along with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, WYVC, Crosscut Ventures, WovenEarth Ventures, Adiuvans, and the Kutnick Family Office. The company also will receive $5 million in Energy Matching Funds from the state of Wyoming, along with a $1.25 million non-dilutive contract from the U.S. Department of Defense.
The company said it expects to begin construction of the 50-kW prototype in summer 2025. It would then scale up the technology to develop utility-scale wind farms.
The Airloom turbine uses vertical blades—what company calls “wings”—that revolve on an oval track mounted on posts. The turbine track can be expanded by enlarging the oval and increasing the number of posts, generating more wattage. Multiple turbines can also be used together, according to the company.
“As global demand for renewable energy increases, Airloom’s technology offers a breakthrough in reducing the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) while addressing the supply chain challenges that have long hindered the wind sector,” said Neal Rickner, CEO of Airloom. “With a focus on efficiency, scalability, and sustainability, Airloom is positioned to become a key player in the future of renewable energy.”
Airloom’s team includes industry executives and others from Google X, Boeing, GE, Vestas, Gulfstream, DNV GL, and more, according to the company. Rickner previously served as COO of Makani, a next-generation wind turbine company owned by Alphabet and Shell.
The company on Tuesday in a news release wrote, “Just as Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) continue to grow in size and complexity, continued cost reductions are hindered by interest rates and supply chain issues. Airloom takes a fundamentally different approach with its simple, mass-manufacturable design that enables higher energy density and a smaller visual footprint without the massive infrastructure that conventional turbines require.
“More efficient, easier-to-deploy wind technology has been a goal for decades, but previous efforts haven’t succeeded in displacing HAWTs because they didn’t have the right combination of high energy production, low capital costs, and system sturdiness. Airloom solves this with a robust, scalable system architecture that is engineered to withstand the harsh and dynamic conditions wind turbines are exposed to. In addition, Airloom is engineered to utilize common materials, automated manufacturing, and existing transportation networks. The resulting system is not only built to wind industry engineering standards, but achieves exceptional power production at low cost.”
Airloom officials have said the company can achieve an LCOE as low as $0.013/kWh. It claims it could develop a 20-MW wind farm for less than $6 million, or about 25% of the cost of a similar wind farm using current technology.
The company said the technology can be arranged in various configurations to take advantage of conditions wherever it is sited.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).