Airloom Energy Inc., a Laramie, Wyoming-based wind energy startup, is raising $12.7 million to promote its novel design of wind energy loops that operate horizontally and low to the ground instead of the giant turbines that dot the Cowboy State’s landscape.
The innovative design could eventually produce hundreds of megawatts of power at a fraction of the cost and footprint of traditional horizontal axis wind turbines with three blades.
The traditional wind turbines are hulking structures half the size of the Eiffel Tower that dot the landscape in southern and central Wyoming.
Paperwork recently filed by Airloom Energy with federal securities regulators does not identify the names of 21 investors involved in the project.
In 2020, Airloom Energy caught the attention of billionaire investor Bill Gates and his well-heeled Breakthrough Energy Ventures in Kirkland, Washington, which began contributing along with Lowercarbon Capital in Jackson, Wyoming, and others about $4 million in seed money.
Wyoming energy projects aren’t foreign to Gates.
He also is an investor in the small nuclear reactor company TerraPower, which is building a plant in Kemmerer in southeastern Wyoming.
The $4 million seed money helped enable Airloom Energy to successfully test its novel idea in Pine Bluffs, and with the U.S. Department of Defense in Paso Robles, California.
The military wants to produce electricity in “forward deployed” areas of a battleground and sees the Airloom Energy concept as having potential.
Pilot Project
In February, Airloom Energy told Cowboy State Daily that it was back in talks with Breakthrough and other venture capitalists to fund millions of dollars more for the company’s next stage of growth.
This year, it plans to begin construction on a larger pilot project in Wyoming that generates up to 1 megawatt of power outside of its Laramie headquarters near the airport.
Airloom Energy has a novel approach to power generation with its wind project.
It operates kind of like what the company describes as a “flying shuttle loom” where independent wings travel back and forth over a repeating pattern, like a shuttle or (weaving shuttlecock) on a flying loom.
Instead of a tall turbine with huge blades, this concept has a series of vertical blades low to the ground that rotate horizontally around an oval.
In practice, the blades travel along a cable in a track atop a series of 82-foot-long poles arranged in an oval, intercepting the wind as it travels down both the home and the backstretch of the cable’s track. As the blades come around, the power they generate is siphoned off to the grid.
Richard Lumley, founder of Airloom Energy, sketched out the idea behind his wind energy project on the cover of a book while having a stein of beer at a Berlin bar more than a decade ago. (Courtesy of Airloom Energy) 
Airloom Energy's concept near Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, has wind-powered vertical blades travel around an oval track, releasing energy as they move around. (Airloom Energy) 
Airloom Energy's novel solution to conventional wind turbines can scale up or down and take up much less space and cost a third as much. (Airloom Energy)
Drinking Beer
Robert Lumley, the company’s founder, got the idea for the wind energy concept after grabbing a stein of beer at a bar in Berlin, Germany.
That’s when the light bulb went off for the avid kiteboarding enthusiast.
While drinking, Lumley took out a book from his holding bag labeled “Airborne Wind Energy” that he got at a conference while in Berlin.
He then scribbled on the back cover a novel idea for a business proposal.
Earlier this year, Lumley told Cowboy State Daily that the early drawing depicted what eventually became the centerpiece of his business at Airloom Energy.
Lumley thinks he has the right person to run Airloom Energy in CEO Neal Rickner, a former F-18 fighter pilot who served from 1996-2009.
Rickner, who joined AirLoom Energy in November 2023, was previously with Google X before Google parent Alphabet refocused resources elsewhere. He held the post of chief operating officer with Google X’s Makani Technologies, which developed airborne wind turbines.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
