Accelerate Wind

Market position

Accelerate Wind operates in distributed rooftop wind generation for commercial and industrial buildings, a segment it presents as adjacent and complementary to established rooftop solar rather than competing with it. Recognition from federal and state programs (NSF, AFWERX, DOE/GSA Green Proving Ground, Innovate Alabama) and selection into the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator and Techstars indicate early-stage, pre-commercial standing.

The company's stated differentiators are placement and aerodynamics: siting turbines at the roof edge where wind speeds are highest allows smaller, cheaper machines than tower-mounted turbines, and patent-pending airfoils passively increase wind speed to raise power production relative to competing turbines. The airfoils were designed with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory. Arch Grants describes the solution as quieter, cheaper and more aesthetically pleasing than current rooftop wind options.

Technology

The turbines are sited at the edge of a roof to capture wind that naturally accelerates as it passes over the roofline, allowing smaller and lower-cost machines integrated into building architecture instead of tall tower-mounted turbines. The product includes patent-pending airfoils that passively increase wind speed to boost power output, designed in collaboration with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory. Engineering work includes computational fluid dynamics, neural networks and genetic algorithms used to optimize the spoiler system; simulation runs were accelerated roughly 15x by moving to Amazon EC2 instances with AMD EPYC processors in partnership with TotalCAE. The CEO is a named inventor on three patents.

Go-to-market

Accelerate Wind positions its turbines as an add-on to rooftop solar, arguing that the market already exists and that solar installers can gain an additional revenue stream by offering wind alongside solar on roof space panels cannot use. Public-sector programs have been a route to validation and early deployment, including the GSA Green Proving Ground building decarbonization program and an AFWERX STTR contract addressing Department of the Air Force needs. The company has also used pitch competitions, accelerators and podcast appearances for visibility.

Commercial and industrial building owners and operators globally, reached in part through rooftop solar installers; federal customers have also engaged the technology via the GSA Green Proving Ground program and an Air Force STTR contract.

Geography

The company is associated with St. Louis, United States, where it is listed as an Arch Grants portfolio company, and describes a team distributed across the country that gathers for biannual all-team summits. Its stated market is commercial and industrial consumers globally, and it has received support from Alabama's state innovation agency.

History

The company states it was founded on December 14, 2016 and has grown to seven full-time employees with a leadership core and engineering staff. It presented at Techstars Demo Day in December 2021, was featured in a TotalCAE/AWS cloud-simulation case study in 2022, received a $250,000 Innovate Alabama grant in August 2022, and was selected for the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator for Infrastructure announced at AWS re:Invent 2022. In 2023 it won the Women in Cleantech and Sustainability pitch competition, was selected by the DOE and GSA as one of 20 technologies for the GSA Green Proving Ground program, and received a $110,000 AFWERX STTR Phase I contract. In January 2024 it announced a $200,000 NSF Technology Enhancement for Commercial Partnerships supplemental award following its NSF SBIR Phase II award. The company holds biannual all-team summits it calls Windapalooza and has visited its test site as a full team.