CleanTech OC Daily - 3/28/12

Lightweight wing harvests offshore wind

Makani Power is working on an unconventional wind turbine that flies like a kite and captures high-altitude winds. The company has nearly finished testing a 30-kilowatt prototype turbine and will soon begin work on a larger, commercial-scale system to be released in 2016.

Essess Merges Google Street View With Zillow to Scale Home Energy Audits
Essess is a startup that's trying to change the way we approach energy leaks in buildings. Since 40% of the energy in the US is consumed by buildings, their new technology aims to reduce that number. The startup plans to send cars past every building in the U.S. and take high-speed thermal scans, build a library of thermal signatures, and assign an energy score to every home.

There’s big money in water data

Just as important as energy data, a recent focus in cleantech news, water data is also a growing business, and Swiss power giant ABB has just made an investment in an Israeli water data startup called TaKaDu. TaKaDu sells water utilities a software-as-a-service tool that crunches water-related data which in turn helps utilities cut down on water losses.