Armand Tardella, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist | Yacine Boucheriguene - Employee #1 | Garrett Smith, Co-Founder & CTO

Wind Fisher develops a revolutionary kite to generate low cost electricity from powerful and persistent, higher altitude winds.

1. Which is the problem that you are trying to mediate? And which UN SDG-s you are solving?

The wind energy industry currently relies heavily on traditional technologies—large, industrial-scale wind turbines. These systems are heavy, costly, and require massive infrastructure. This is particularly true for onshore and offshore wind power. The result? A bottleneck for new site approvals due to a lack of social acceptance and sustainability concerns.

At Wind Fisher, we’re developing a new kind of airborne wind energy device. It’s lighter, simpler, and easier to deploy than traditional wind turbines. Our unique, helium-filled cylinders rise to higher-altitude winds where they capture the wind’s mechanical energy and transfer it to a ground station through lightweight ropes. Back on the ground, a standard generator converts the energy into electricity. 

At higher altitudes–300 to 500 meters–winds are more powerful and more constant. That means that 60% of the time, we can harvest electricity. Because we use 10 times less material than conventional wind turbines, we can produce electricity at a much lower cost. 

On top of that, our system operates far above the ground. And when the wind stops blowing, the cylinders are lowered to ground level. So there’s no visual or sound pollution, one of the major drawbacks of traditional wind farms.

This makes Wind Fisher an environmentally-friendly, cost-effective, and socially acceptable solution. So we are solving the problem of efficient energy production and deployment while helping to achieve SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure).

2. How did the idea to create the company come to mind? How did your team come to be?

Wind Fisher is the culmination of over 10 years of R&D between co-founders Armand Tardella and Garrett Smith. Having spent over 23 years in the aerospace industry at Boeing and Airbus, Garrett knew that the future of energy could benefit from lighter, more efficient designs inspired by aviation.

We saw the challenges that other airborne wind energy companies faced—always adding complexity to their systems to handle difficult control problems for take-off and landing. We wanted a system that was naturally safe and extremely simple. By focusing on a lighter-than-air design and cylindrical shape, we built Wind Fisher around the idea of efficiency and inherent reliability.

Garrett and Armand combined our expertise in aerospace engineering and fundamental physics to create a solution that solves key issues found in other higher altitude wind power systems.

3. Why did you choose to participate in the Paris Techstars accelerator program? What are you looking forward to the most?

Joining Techstars is a crucial step in scaling Wind Fisher. We chose the Paris Techstars program because it aligns with our goal of making a significant global impact on the energy transition. 

This program gives us access to world-class mentors, industry experts, and the resources we need to refine our business model and prepare for commercialization. We’re especially looking forward to connecting with other founders and learning from Techstars alumni. Having that community of support and mentorship will help us grow as individuals and as a team, and put us in the best position to tackle the challenges of scaling Wind Fisher into an industrial-level solution.

4. What are you the most proud of in your initial journey with your company?

We’re incredibly proud of how far we’ve come, despite the complexity of the problem we’re tackling. Developing a higher-altitude wind energy system that’s lighter, simpler, and more cost-effective than traditional turbines has been no small feat.

One of our greatest achievements is how we’ve managed to keep our system safe and simple—avoiding the flight control difficulties that other companies in our industry have faced. 

We’re solving a massive problem with a solution that’s elegant and efficient, and that’s something we’re incredibly proud of.

5. How do you plan to measure the positive impact of your company in the next 5 years? 

Over the next 5 years, we aim to deploy our higher-altitude wind energy devices globally, both for small & medium enterprises and large scale utilities.

We plan to measure our impact by:

• The amount of renewable electricity produced by our products and the associated carbon reductions. 

• The number of new energy sites we enable that were previously inaccessible to wind energy.

• Cost savings for communities and businesses, making renewable energy more affordable.

We believe that our solution can significantly contribute to reducing global carbon emissions while making clean energy accessible to communities worldwide. Good Luck, Wind Fisher!

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