St. Louis Inno is publishing profiles of its 2022 Startups to Watch this week. See the entire list of honorees below.
ACCELERATE WIND
Headquarters: St. Louis
Founder: Erika Boeing
What it does: Accelerate Wind is developing wind turbines for commercial buildings. The turbines are designed to produce affordable wind energy by being located on the edges of the roofs of commercial buildings. The company says its turbines are complementary to a building’s solar panels and its go-to-market strategy involves selling its turbines to solar installers.
The latest: As it fine-tunes its wind turbine, Accelerate Wind has secured several key partnerships in its effort to bring its product to commercialization. In 2021, it was awarded grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. Additionally, it was selected for the Birmingham, Alabama-based TechStars EnergyTech Accelerator.
Why you should watch it: The development of Accelerate Wind’s wind turbines comes as investors are flocking to the clean technology sector. From June 30, 2020, to June 30, 2021, investment into companies focused on climate change and clean technology grew 210% year over year, according to PwC’s State of Climate Tech 2021 report. By making its product complementary to solar panels, Accelerate Wind believes it can quickly integrate itself into the clean tech market and find adoption by users.
What’s next: The upcoming year will represent a key transition for Accelerate Wind as it hopes to push its R&D efforts closer to commercialization. That will involve it launching several pilots of its wind turbines, with the company saying it expects to deploy its technology on five to 10 buildings in the next few years. The startup also plans to raise a seed funding round this year.
More about Accelerate Wind
Founded: 2017
Capital raised: Accelerate Wind has raised $2.5 million through grants and equity funding.
CEO: Erika Boeing
Employees: 5
Investors: TechStars, Alabama Power Co., Erie Chamber of Commerce and several individual angels have invested in Accelerate Wind. It has received non-dilutive funding from Arch Grants, Midwest Energy Research Consortium, NYSERDA, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Army, Rochester Gas & Electric and Cleantech Open
