Airloom Energy just broke ground on a rectangular wind turbine pilot site near Rock River, Wyoming, and it has the potential to change how wind power gets built in the US.

Backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Airloom is developing a new kind of wind turbine that promises to be cheaper, faster to install, and more efficient than today’s towering three-blade giants. The Wyoming site will host the company’s first utility-scale turbine as part of a plan to prove the tech works in the real world.

This comes at a time when the grid could use some more innovation. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) says half the US could face energy shortfalls by 2035. And with AI and data centers driving up demand, Gartner warns that 40% of facilities worldwide will be constrained by access to sufficient power by 2027.

“Current energy technologies can’t meet the growing complexity and demand of the next decade,” said Neal Rickner, Airloom’s CEO. “We need more flexible systems that can be built fast and at scale. That’s the only way we’ll get to real energy security and independence.”

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Airloom’s turbines are compact and modular. Instead of sweeping a circular area like traditional turbines, the turbines in the pilot sweep a rectangular area – a design that lets them capture more wind in less space. That makes them a better fit for areas with limited land or strict height limits, like airports or military bases.

They’re also built with small, mass-produced parts made in the US, so they’re cheaper to ship and easier to install. While traditional wind projects can take up to five years to build, Airloom says its turbines can be up and running in under a year.

The Wyoming pilot site is meant to prove the turbines’ performance, validate the cost savings, and build out maintenance and deployment strategies ahead of commercial projects starting in 2027. Airloom is also exploring other use cases like defense, disaster relief, and offshore wind.

The company raised $7.5 million in seed funding last October, with support from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Crosscut Ventures, and others. It also received $5 million in matching funds from the State of Wyoming and a $1.25 million contract from the Department of Defense.

Paul Judge, former head of product management at GE Onshore Wind and now an advisor to Airloom, called the pilot a big moment: “This pilot is more than a test site; it’s the beginning of a fundamentally new approach to resilient renewable energy generation: wind energy that’s faster to deploy, land-efficient, and built for the energy challenges ahead.”

Read more: New DOE report finds 90% of wind turbine materials are recyclable

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