A Wind Power Pioneer's Hard Lesson on Startup Funding
Too often it’s not the technology that fails but the capital.
These things cost money, you know.
Photographer: DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images
I’m used to getting emails touting some startup’s plan for world domination. So when I got one from the CEO of a wind-energy firm with the subject line “Heading for the cliff,” I actually read it. It helped I had spoken already with Jereme Kent, who founded and runs One Energy Enterprises LLC, about a year ago. But it was more what you might call the radical candor of the message that got my attention.
Based in Findlay, Ohio, One Energy designs, installs and runs distributed wind turbines and associated high-voltage site networks at industrial facilities. Distributed wind power — as opposed to big wind farms of multiple turbines — accounts for only about 1% of the overall wind fleet but capacity rose almost four-fold in the 10 years through 20181. One Energy has been around for a decade and installed roughly 40 megawatts of capacity so far, with appliance-maker Whirlpool Corp. and cement giant LafargeHolcim Ltd. among its clients. It touts the benefits of, among other things, reliability, hedged power costs, optimized energy use and, of course, green bragging rights.