Accelerate Wind, originally a St. Louis-based startup that has since moved to Birmingham, has big plans.
The company has a goal of developing affordable wind turbines for commercial buildings. The turbines are designed to be installed at the edge of roofs to take advantage of wind that naturally speeds up as it travels over roof edges. They use high performance computing (HPC) to run models that inform the placement, shape and size of turbines.
Accelerate Wind
The company made the move to Birmingham after participating in Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator and receiving an Innovate Alabama grant.
CEO and founder Erika Boeing said in an interview with the BBJ last year that the company was born out of a realization that the solar market was expanding, especially on rooftops, but commercial building owners could not produce their entire energy demand from solar alone.
"There's kind of this missed opportunity for people who want to generate renewable energy but don't have other sources that they can use," Boeing said. "Wind was always a potential option, but the problem was most wind turbines didn't pay themselves back within their lifetime, and so that's what Accelerate Wind has set out to solve."
