Thomas Hårklau Founder Kitemill AS Evangerveien 3 5703 Voss Norway th@kitemill.no www.kitemill.com
Kitemill – Past, Present and Future
Thomas Hårklau, Lode Carnel, Espen Oland, Sture Smidt, Jo Grini, Christer Svenkerud, Tallak Tveide Kitemill
Kitemill was established 2008. Backed up by experienced advisors and strong partner, a small team has been run-ning the company by a few suitable strategies. Now, the strength of the team and the importance of the strategies has become clearer. Strategies that have the most influ-ence on Kitemill can be summarized in; priority to testing, connect with the right competence, share risk, build mo-mentum and prioritize the most critical problem. The lack of rules for operating kites even in low altitudes, led to an early and serous dialog with the national Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Already in 2015, after a few years with temporary solutions building experience, Kitemill got approval for the first permanent danger area. More re-cently a second permanent area has been approved and activated, allowing closer coordination with general avi-ation.
In 2018 Kitemill took the initial steps with a temporary build permit, supporting present and coming operation, involving basic consequence analysis. The permits prove that the method to achieve necessary right to operate is viable.
A central strategy for Kitemill’s research & development is to connect with the right competence whenever we face a new challenge. Through several projects we have learned the challenges and benefits with such approach. A critical point is when the R&D projects developed by partners shall be adopted by the company. Several large technology transfer processes have been completed and
the small Kitemill team holds comprehensive technology base and corresponding system understanding. This is now proved by several important results from further in-ternal R&D. Further Kitemill sees many new opportunities for cooperation and risk sharing as the technology being industrialized and aims to continue with similar methods. With a good test site Kitemill have accomplished frequent testing for years. But when the team now being extended it is to operate even more frequent, gradually transiting to continuous operation.
In 2015 Kitemill signed letter of intent for sale of the first kite turbines. In 2017 Kitemill’s customer purchased the first plant which since then has been used ad-hoc opera-tion by Kitemill. 2019 Kitemill’s customer takes the step from the LoI to a turbine supply agreement for the first kite park. Both Kitemill and the customer now aims for the new contractual milestones.
In a longer perspective Kitemill’s strategy is to launch rather small models and aim for utility scale volumes. This will provide a large base of operational hours, neces-sary to qualify for large scale deployment. Independent of funding, and anchored in history of similar technology introductions, this seem to be the fastest way to become a leading company with the most significant energy tech-nology.