Delft-based Kitepower, a startup generating electricity by flying kites, announced on Monday that it has secured €896K in crowdfunding (at the time of writing this article) on the Crowdcube platform from 797 investors.
The Dutch company launched this crowdfunding campaign with a target of €700K.
The crowdfunding will close on October 4, 2022, Tuesday.
Kitepower says it will use the funds to provide short-term solutions for disaster areas, refugee camps, construction sites, and festivals.
The announcement comes over a year after raising €3M from Energy innovation fund ENERGIIQ, Stichting ifund, and Windhandel Beheer.
Johannes Peschel and Roland Schmehl founded Kitepower in 2016 as a result of the work done by TU Delft’s Kitepower research group established by the former Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels in 2003.
Wubbo Ockels first began researching kite power generation in 1993 and, by 1997, had filed a patent application for the Laddermill technology.
The first 20kW Kitepower system was completed in 2007, proving the concept viable.
Currently, Kitepower is developing one of the first containerized on-shore AWES to enter the market.
Kitepower is an Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) company developing innovative and cost-effective alternatives to existing wind turbines.
Consequently, the company uses kites to generate electricity, using up to 90 percent less material with the potential of being twice as efficient as conventional wind turbines with the same power output.
Kitepower’s target market is microgrids (remote areas, temporary power supplies & off-grid installations).
Unlike conventional wind turbines, the company’s systems are much more mobile and easier to deploy since they do not require resource-intensive towers or heavy foundations.
The system can harness more substantial and persistent winds at higher altitudes, allowing for capacity factors greater than 0.5 and cost-effective electricity generation.
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