Will KiweeOne be funded?
Poll closes on Sunday, 2018-12-09T18:00.
Croudfunding campaign closes on Wednesday, 2018-01-09T23:59
0 voters
We canât really predict this as we canât look inside the heads of the people browsing that crowdfunding platform, and I personally donât know how many people browse the platform.
If I were working for an NGO and looking at possible means to get electricity to a community, Iâd give their offering a pass though. Much too expensive, too little power for that price, and much too prone to failure. Even if I were given it free, Iâd still need to send people over to deliver it and explain its use. Itâd be time wasted and Iâd lose the respect of the community if it were to break in a couple of months. Much better to just send something I know will work and will last.
The news that some turbines would go to NGOs was only announced the 14th of November. The idea doesnât seem that well thought out yet.
If I were in their shoes Iâd do a lot with social media, for getting the word out there and better understanding what their target market should be and what that target market needs.
Iâve looked for graphs showing funding% over time, to see if funding happens mostly at the beginning, constantly or at the end. Didnât find much. Thereâs this paper, but I didnât want to dive that deep.
I also donât see the NGO use case. A stationary windmill would just be much more reliable. Donât know what a NGO could do that requires it to move and have power when resting. Maybe protecting animals from poachers, wildlife studies or something like that.
Maybe power on a sailing boat for cool drinks is a good use case.
Olivier Normand posted:
Dear AWE group.
In reaction to Joeâs words saying that no big players were on the market I would like to write some words.
I donât recognize myself nor my company as a small nor big players. I would like to explain kitewinderâs position on the market and why we made that product we named Kiwee.
We started in 2014 working on AWES, then 4 yeras later, we had that product working and available for sale. I wonât post any link here but if any readerâs wantâs it , fill free to ask.
We choose simplicity to develop our technology. First because that would be obviously cheaper to develop and second because this is the natural way innovation goes. Started with basics things working, up to more complex and sophisticated things with increasing efficiency and reliability.
At first we thought of a bigger product in the range 500W to 1KW for remote residential . Then we realise 2 things:
1 / that would be much more expensive to develop
2/ Who would accept to leave 3 to 5 K euros to buy a product without any reference ? I wonât.
that decide us to go for a much smaller product, Kiwee 100W for nomadic use . manual launch / automatic retrieval / frontwind
Iâm convinced that it is our key ( and also a key for others âplayersâ ) to the market that need to be educated to those new technology. You simply canât come to the market saying "hello we have such a great product, trust us ". You need reference, feedback and so on. I think that it will come from the bottom ( people ) up to the industry and not the other way around. I might be wrong, but that is my guess.
And a word on Kiwee now. developping kiwee as been quite challenging for sure. But donât get it wrong, the most comlpicated things was to make it at an affordable price for customers.
Thanks for reading
Olivier from Kitewinder
[posts omitted]
Olivier,
A specific topic is made on Will KiweeOne be funded? - #3 by Tom, from the new AWE forum http://forum.awesystems.info/: your vision of the market is discussed.
It is difficult to plan the market and guess what can happen: it can be the reason why no player has yet discussed about it on the present forum. However Kitewinder and KiweeOne are and have been welcomed here.
I would try to reply by mentioning two possibiities:
- The product is finished and ready for sale. The comparison of the sale price with solar panels would be made for the same available power. So KiweOne can be advantageous when it can be used while other energy systems cannot: finding the advantageous conditions and places (no sun, no wind at ground level) of use could accelerate the market.
- The buyers would finance a part of R&D and KiweeOne is seen as a step. For example is it possible to stack several superimposed energy modules acting the same loop belt? If it is not too difficult it can be a way to scale-up, using the same elements under a larger kite.
Concerning other (automated most of the time, so âbigâ) AWE systems like that are described on Airborne Wind Energy: Advances in Technology Development and Research | SpringerLink it is clear that some steps are to be made before marketing.
PierreB
There is a reason, why many AWESystems donât have smaller products and go straight for the kilowatt scale, using prototypes and research to gain more funding.
I donât see a big market fĂźr smaller awes. As pierre said, solar energy and windmills are available at a competitive price. They donât need to be launched or landed.
I do think KiweeOne can compete with both windmills and solar while mobile. Solar is usually heavy. (Rollable solar panels are available, the bigger ones usually at 24V). The setup time can be the advantage to windmills.
As an investor seeing a failed consumer product would be deterring (for me, who has never been a professional investor), despite how hard it is to make a consumer product. It does say something about market evaluation.
That being said, KiweeOne is the closest weâve been to an awes generator actually being on the market with a pricetag. Thatâs great news. (Skysails or at least skysails yacht is also selling their prouct right now.) I wish them the best of luck. We should also help them out by sharing their campaign to potential buyers and on social media, for example on facebook, where they are quite active.
Hi all, I will try to reply point by point :
About our choice to go on small wind market : Solar and windmill are available at competitive price. Yes but this market (small wind ) is not mature because performance at low height is really bad. Going higher for small wind makes a lot more sense than for big wind turbine. This big wind turbine market is mature, operational and bankable. Utility scale awes claims years ago they will divide Kwh price by 2⌠10 years later, still nothing and big wind has divide its price by 2⌠They wonât be able to be competitive before at least a decade in my opinion. How would they survive during that time ?
Abot our NGO positionning. We deliver to them for free. We let people back a part of a kiwee for those NGO. A kiwee is then given to them. We already have a partnership with one called âOrganisation Science Internationalâ. They do endangered species photography and need mobility because they change spot every day. Dominique is in charge to teach kids from this NGO how to use Kiwee. We already did a mission in Kazhakstan last year. So as you can read, this idea is really well thought.
About use case : Many situations needs mobility or at least the possibility to uninstall the product to avoid stealing. with 100 W you could pump water , do desalinization, lighting, recharge portable electric tool, phone charging ⌠use cases are limitless. And donât forget you could use plenty of them , they fly frontwind. Saying hundred watts are useless but kilowatts are not has no justification.
One more thing to explain, you could see kiwee as a power generator but it could also be used as a totem. For the surf school for example or any professional working on the seaside. You could also think to festival.
Olivier from kitewinder
My favorite AWES use case is ship propulsion. No competition by windmills there.
Have you shared this anywhere beside facebook? Would definitely like to read about it and share it.
The reason for that statement is the complexity of operation and unreliability of awes compared to solar or windmills. If one spends the resources to launch and land the thing or automate that, it better be worth it. I think it scales disproportionate to scale of awes.
As stated above if one is mobile and needs to set up the generator anyway, awes is better, if it is easier to set up.
@Kitewinder whatâs your prediction on your success?
That is an excellent use case. I would put that in your crowdfunding description, or release it as ânewsâ for the crowdfunding campaign.
Your other points are also good I think.
I do think your price point now is too high, and 100 Watts is a bit low, but I guess that canât be avoided. You just have to find a market where that isnât so much of a concern.
What consumer (non-business) market would you like to target with this 100 Watt turbine?
About prediction of success, we reached 46% today and still have 50 days to go. So I think we have a pretty good chance.
We are aiming RVâs owners, sailers and surfers.
I agree with you on the âeasy to useâ thing. Our way to decline this is to guarantee a setup time of 5 min.
About pricing. The smaller the product get, the harder to have a competitive price. So we really spend a hell of time lowering it. Of course it we goes down with production and improvement.
A stamina kiwee version could also be imagined as all the concept have already been done one kiwee one. Scaling the product will be really simple.
Click on the âccâ at the bottom of the video to get accurate French subtitles.
Canât activate subitiles for this video. Donât know why.
Here they talk about the NGOs. (Subtitles work there)
Could you guys confirm English cc does not work?
@Kitewinder, at the time I posted the link there was (human corrected I think) French cc. Now I donât see a cc button, so no cc for me now.
Do you see a cc button?
@Tom, Iâm referring to the link I posted. English cc works for the link you posted for me.
Which video are you referring to?
I get cc for the biodyssey one, but not the other.
is it working now?
Yes, thatâs the same video, but you uploaded this one instead of Inventifs - Transtech Aquitaine. Here I see the English cc.
Ah ok, well Transtech is the events and that is the original video. We then got the video and translate it.
you should prefer our youtube channel for official content. enjoy the vid, share and like. And tell people to support us ! We will soon have great news comming
You should check out reddit.com. Some communities might have some interest in your product, like /r/kites, /r/vandwellers, /r/camping, /r/GoRVing, and renewable energy subreddits and so on.
But do some research on the subreddits beforehand, what time of the week and time of the day is the best to post? Is self-promotion okay? How many subscribers does the subreddit have?
For example on /r/overlanding you have this moderation policy: