Meteorological towers will be rising to an icy blue Wyoming sky in January for an Airloom Energy project that seeks to create an entirely new kind of wind tower, one that’s not only cheaper and more efficient, but also a lot shorter and much less visible on the landscape.
As with most ventures that happen outside in the Cowboy State, one of the first questions the company has to answer is will it hold up to Wyoming’s harsh, cold and windy winters? Airloom will find that out next winter, 2025, thanks to an ambitious timeline that puts its building phase in the spring/summer of 2025.
Company officials feel optimistic about that. After all, Airloom’s idea, which could make today’s unsightly giant wind towers obsolete, was Wyoming-born and raised.
Robert Lumley of Laramie was having a beer in Berlin after a two-day conference on wind energy when he got the idea for an entirely new type of wind-capturing device.
He sketched his idea on the first clean scrap of paper he could find — the back cover of the conference book. It looked like a child’s drawing of a little space-age racetrack, with an oddball lineup of propellers, zigging and zagging in crazy directions.
In his mind, though, it was much more elegant.
Small, adjustable propeller blades, suspended in the air, tracing physics-defined patterns along a track, gathering wind energy along the way.
The exciting thing to Lumley, though, was not just that this device could do a better job more cheaply, but it would also be one-third the size of the unsightly wind towers that have come to dominate some of Wyoming’s scenic highway corridors.
“Part of the reason we see all the wind turbines from the highway is because there isn’t the infrastructure in remote places to get towers there,” Airloom Energy CEO Neil Rickner told Cowboy State Daily. “So Airloom could be built in more remote places, just because we won’t need fully developed highways to deliver turbines.”
Even if the Airloom wind farm is located near a highway, it won’t be nearly as visible, Rickner added.
“We’re not going to need those flashing red lights, for example,” he said. “And we’re smaller, so these will have much less impact on the community. Even if we’re just a couple miles off the highway, you’re probably not going to see us.”
Working In Winter In Wyoming
Airloom Energy’s ambitious timeline is going to eventually require some challenging winter work in Wyoming. That’s not because of the incoming Trump administration, Rickner said. It’s more a matter of the funding to get this innovative concept off — or in this case on — the ground.
“We’ve been in contact with our congressional delegation,” Rickner said. “And they’ve been really receptive and very appreciate of constituents reaching out, so I’m hopeful.”
Rickner said his understanding is that the things that could matter to the company in terms of tax credits are probably 18 to 24 months out, which gives the company time to catch a breath and figure things out.
“There’s no immediate impact for Airloom,” Rickner said.
Airloom does have a lot of grassroots support as a Cowboy State-born company that intends to ultimately set up its home base and manufacturing in Wyoming, Rickner added.
“Wyoming Venture Capital is one of our investors, one of our bigger investors, actually,” he said. “And then we were also privileged to receive a grant from the Wyoming Energy Authority.”
The latter is a matching grant of $5 million.
Airloom also has some big-name investors, among them Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Gates is also backing another Wyoming energy project, the TerraPower nuclear plant in Kemmerer.
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) 
(Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
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)
Military Applications
One of Airloom’s big supporters is the U.S. Air Force.
Airloom has a $1.5 million contract with the Air Force to develop its innovative approach to wind power, which the military sees fitting into its mission of creating a more resilient military base, one that can still function if the power grids around are wiped out.
“F.E. Warren (Air Force Base) needs power to execute their mission,” Rickner said. “And what every base in the U.S. is doing is, by 2035, they have the goal of becoming an island that can support critical power needs if the side-supporting grid goes down. So Airloom can be a core part of that.”
Airloom’s novel concept is also more practical at a military base where airplanes and helicopters are flying in, because it’s not a giant 500-foot structure that aircraft could ram into. And since they won’t need a flashing red light, they’re less visible to adversaries that might be looking to put it out of commission from the air.
The Air Force is also exploring the potential of geothermal power at F.E. Warren, using novel approaches that might be suitable in an area that’s not typically known for that type of energy.
Rickner believes Airloom’s invention can be useful out in the field for not just military uses, but also disaster relief scenarios.
“If you think about an expeditionary version of Airloom, it can be put up with a forklift,” Rickner said. “That opens up a lot of possibility for military, foreign-operating cases, but also disaster relief scenarios and places where it’s just hard to get energy.”
Airloom has already been approached by some islands in the South Pacific, for example, which have a lot of wind, but can’t get a crane.
“So, we’ve sort of tapped into this unmet need where wind energy wants to go but can’t, because you can’t build a big wind turbine everywhere,” Rickner said.
There Can Be Only One
Testing sites for the project Airloom is building are down to five potential locations in southeast Wyoming, but Rickner plans to put just three meteorological, or MET, towers up. Those will test wind to see which of the three are most favorable.
“We will then pick one of those sites,” Rickner said. “We’re not going to build three projects.”
That will put building the project sometime in the spring — the soonest it can happen — and completion in the latter part of the year, which puts the testing in winter of 2025, a challenging timeframe.
But it’s also a good test for a system that has to stand up to Wyoming weather 365 days a year, and if it can stand for that, Rickner figures it can stand anywhere.
The project Airloom is building out for testing will be temporary, Rickner added. It’s just intended to prove out the concept, showing that it has the right commercial potential, furthering the business case for a manufacturing plant that will build these new wind power devices. The plant, if and when it is built, would ultimately be somewhere in Wyoming, creating jobs in the Cowboy State, Rickner said.
“We’re confident that it’s all going to fit together,” he added. “But the first time you put anything together, it’s never going to be as smooth as you want. Like any mechanical project, there’s always things that need a little tinkering here and there.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
