Blog

First grid-connected flight with power production

Kitekraft has completed a first flight with its recently installed grid connection. Even though wind conditions were not ideal, some power was generated and fed into the German power grid.

Company

Kitekraft Connects Flying Wind Turbine Demonstrator to Public Grid

As a first of its kind, Kitekraft connected its test site to Germany's public electricity grid. This marks a crucial step towards the commercialization of Kitekraft's flying wind turbine technology.

Technology

Kitekraft completes wind tunnel test campaign

Kitekraft has recently completed another successful test campaign in the wind tunnel. Two aspects of its flying wind turbine design could be veryfied: Hovering in high winds, which is crucial for take-off and landing, and the performance of newly designed carbon fiber reinforced plastic rotors.

Company

The next phase

Kitekraft enters into a new phase towards building commercially available flying wind turbines as we are excited to present our new, fully integrated prototype, bringing together kite and ground station. With this our focus shifts from the conceptual development towards improving reliability and efficiency instead.

Company

Kitekraft raises $1.6M to make wind turbines that fly

Kitekraft, the Munich-based renewable energy startup building flying wind turbines, has raised $1.6 million to continue its development towards a first pilot installation.

Technology

Tech-Deep-Dive: How Kitekraft Solves Aerodynamics

Aerodynamics is an interesting and one of the most challenging fields of science and engineering. You can even win $1 million if you can contribute to the understanding of the underlying math. In this blog post we want to share our take on it!

Technology

Do We Need Flying Wind Turbines? (Spoiler: Absolutely!)

In this blog post we talk about different technologies that play a role in solving the climate crisis, because this is not a one-technology show. However, the differences between the different technologies can be significant and also vary a lot when looking at different metrics. This time, we'll put the focus on material usage - inspired by Bill Gates' new book "How to avoid a climate disaster".

Technology

How to Develop Flying Wind Turbines Quickly and Cost-Efficiently?

In August this year, we celebrated the milestone of flying figure eights for the first time with our kite. In this blog post, we share some of the ingredients that enabled this fast pace development.

Technology

Kitekraft succeeds with autonomous all phase flight of new kite demonstrator

We are thrilled to announce that we have reached a major milestone in our development towards our first 100kW product with a successful flight in all phases. The flight was fully autonomous apart from giving high level commands to launch and land.

Technology

Taking over the Baton from Makani

With Makani's discontinuation we make use of their data open-sourcing and reflect on their achievements, possible mistakes, and our interpretation and anticipation of them.

Company

Kitekraft Completes Flight in Figure-Eights

We hit a major milestone by completing our first figure-eight flight. We are proud that we came to this point in just over one year after company foundation. Below is a video.

Technology

Digitizing Energy Generation

We are proud to announce that Kitekraft is a winner of the “Gründerwettbewerb Digitale Innovationen” (a startup competition on digital innovations) awarded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Company

Kitekraft Takes Off — With Y Combinator and Beyond

With this blog post we want to share the latest developments around Kitekraft and how this idea is literally “taking off” and became a reality.

Company

The Kitekraft Master Plan

Find out about the idea behind Kitekraft's approach: Enabled by our efficient design we want to start with smaller systems. Then scale up. Then scale up again. And continue to do so until we reach the MW range.

Technology

Which Energy Technology has the Lowest CO2-Footprint?

Renewable energy technologies must take over the global energy generation quickly, so that we achieve the 2 °C goal and prevent the tipping of our planet’s climate. But which energy technology has the lowest CO2-footprint, i.e. which energy technology is the cleanest?

Company

Kitekraft Unveils 5kW Kite

Today’s energy generation is dirty. Renewable energy technologies are not yet cost-effective enough and are therefore not deployed fast enough. According to climate scientists, only a few decades are left to reduce global anthropogenic CO2 emissions to zero, so that we achieve the 2°C goal and prevent the tipping of our planet’s climate. This is a short time span for achieving such a goal, which is only possible through improved renewable energy technologies.