21 Wind

The ongoing reliance on fossil fuels and limitations of existing renewable solutions lead to continued high emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases and worsen the ongoing climate crisis. More diverse and better renewable energy generation systems are needed. Kitekraft develops a novel wind energy system for onshore or offshore locations. Our Airborne Wind Energy Systems reduce the material footprint compared to conventional wind turbines by 90% by replacing hardware with software. The systems operate fully autonomously. This not only leads to a smaller carbon footprint, but also to a simplified value chain from material sourcing, over logistics, to installation, and O&M. Even after decommissioning our systems can simply be recycled thanks to being built mostly from aluminum. Besides that, the compactness also reduces the visual impact on close-by habitants which will result in less public opposition and a faster permitting process. Kitekraft targets the global wind market of over €100B (2020) with two business models, either selling turnkey systems or selling the energy directly. First products in the range of 100-500kW will be designed for distributed energy resources (DER) applications such as microgrids, later MW-scale systems are intended for utility applications. We have signed LOIs ($330M), PPAs, and one MOU ($4M) with customers and investors and are officially feeding into the German power grid at our demonstrator site in Oberbiberg, south of Munich. Kitekraft was founded in 2019 as a spin-off of the Technical University of Munich and has a team of 10 led by Maximilian Isensee (Co-CEO, COO) and Dr.-Ing. Florian Bauer (Co-CEO, CTO). Kitekraft supports the EU Green Deal, the REPowerEU, and the Fit for 55 goals and strengthens the EU’s technological and industrial sovereignty, competitiveness, and green industry profitability by further decoupling its energy production from countries that supply us with fossil fuels.