Everybody that is involved in the wind power scene that I know was super skeptical about Makani. Those are people that have been building wind power installations for decades. Criticisms ranged from complexity to zoning, land use, safety and efficiency compared to more traditional designs. Moonshots are great if you have an actual goal that is achievable and will give you an advantage if it succeeds. Keep in mind that the original 'moonshot' (going to the moon!) was a PR effort, not something that was meant to be sold, turn a profit or done on a large scale. It was simply a massive PR job to try to recover from the double hit of first satellite and first man in space victories the USSR scored over the USA. This whole project to me looked like a Google level version of Armadillo space, interesting but ultimately going nowhere. Shell may keep it alive as a PR item, they will need all the help they can get on that front but I really doubt it will ever be used in production anywhere in volumes that matter.
The easiest way to compare Makani to stationary wind installations out there generating power today is to look at the effective cross section of the rotors and to realize that a moving rotor consumes exactly the same amount of power in lift that it uses going forward. So that will cancel out across the loop leaving you with a bunch of small rotors vs a much larger rotor sweeping an enormous surface. And launching it is one thing, bringing it back in in a storm is a completely different proposition.
A 12MW Makani installation would use much more land and would be much more fragile than a comparable regular HAWT.
The easiest way to compare Makani to stationary wind installations out there generating power today is to look at the effective cross section of the rotors and to realize that a moving rotor consumes exactly the same amount of power in lift that it uses going forward. So that will cancel out across the loop leaving you with a bunch of small rotors vs a much larger rotor sweeping an enormous surface. And launching it is one thing, bringing it back in in a storm is a completely different proposition.
A 12MW Makani installation would use much more land and would be much more fragile than a comparable regular HAWT.