Then I saw this: https://makanipower.com/makani/images/pages/technology/cta.j...
Edit: Ignore the following line. It is too early in the morning.
--A single one is producing 600KW, so you need a few per household, and many thousands for a town.--
Their website explicitly says [2] (Overview 1.4):
> designed to transfer up to 600 kilowatts of electrical power—enough to power about 300 homes
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour#Confusion_of_kil...
Your car engine is rated in power (typically horsepower in the US, though kW is equivalent), your car fuel tank is rated in energy, that is kWh or joules.
Power determines how hard you can work. Energy determines for how long.
A big house running AC for a hour would give you a kWh number. The instantaneous load is measured in kW.
> Nor is it absolutely necessary that the electricity generation is done on the ground. Makani, a firm recently absorbed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has a different approach. It is lifting the generators into the sky, on board a pilotless aircraft with a wingspan of 26 metres. This craft has eight rotors, which act as propellers for take-off and landing. Once at operating altitude, however, they become miniature turbines. The electricity they generate (600 kilowatts at full capacity) is sent to the ground through a power line encased in a tether nearly half a kilometre long. Makani’s prototype has been tested in Hawaii and, later this year, a further series of tests from an oil platform off the coast of Norway are planned.
I'm excited to report that we really did pull off the offshore test a few months after this Economist story went to print.
Video of our recent offshore test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA (I know it almost looks like a rendering, but it's for real!)
And a company blog entry about the test: https://medium.com/makani-blog/makanis-airborne-wind-power-s...
Makani was funded in part by ARPA-E earlier in its existence, and they recently also made a video about Makani that might be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ly6na58e0