Meet enerlace

We set up enerlace to bring the best in digitalisation to the wind energy sector.

Founded in 2023, we’re a spin off from the University of Stuttgart.

Our mission:

Speed up the deployment of wind energy by automating processes

We need to install 10x today's wind energy capacity by 2050

To help reduce the effect of climate change, we need to install about 10 times as much wind energy capacity in the next 25 years as is already installed.

That means sustained 10% growth, year-on-year.

We’ve already got problems.

It takes about 8 years to build wind farms in Germany now, up from 6 years in the period 2011-2017.
Not enough wind farms are making it through from concept to construction. 1 in 3 wind farms gets rejected early on as unfeasible, and then 65% of planning applications are rejected.

Wind energy has a skills shortage

Scaling up the wind energy sector is a huge challenge.

There’s a personnel shortage. Around 65% of expert or specialist positions can’t be filled at the moment.
And we don’t use people’s time well. For example, one survey found that data analysts spend up to 80% of their time on finding and preparing data. That’s time that could have been better used contributing their expertise and experience to difficult questions.

Our solution is automation.

We help wind energy companies automate their wind monitoring.

That means:

Saving time because processes run faster.
Avoiding mistakes because software doesn’t get tired
Always being up-to-date because processes can be repeated when new information is available.

Why "enerlace"?

Enerlace is a portmanteau of two things that are important to us:

energy
Ada Lovelace, the 19th century mathematician and writer, and pioneer of computer programming.

Dr. Andrew Clifton

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Andy manages enerlace and is the first point of contact for all enquiries.

Andy deployed his first lidar in 2008 and has since made wind and solar resource measurements in Europe, north America, and UK.

He was the lead author of the 2013 IEA Wind recommended practices for wind lidar and led IEA Wind Task 32 on wind lidar from 2019.

Dr. Ines Würth

Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer

Ines is responsible for ensuring that enerlace’s products meet our customers’ needs.

Ines is an aerospace engineer and measurement expert with a focus on wind turbine power performance testing and wind power forecasting.

She has 10 years experience in data analysis and international R&D project management as a researcher and then Team Leader at the University of Stuttgart.

Jonas Held

Co-Founder & Full stack developer

Jonas is the lead front-end developer at enerlace. He’s responsible for the intuitive and easy-to-use user interface of our web app, Moli.

Jonas completed his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Media at the Hochschule der Medien (HdM) in Stuttgart where his studies focused on web and game development. He gained practical experience as an intern and later as a working student at the startup Fryd before joining enerlace.

Steffen Abel

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Steffen leads the development of our software. He makes sure that Moli can quickly and reliably handle large amounts of measurement data.

Steffen is a full stack developer and solution architect with 15 years of experience in building SaaS tools for B2B and B2C applications. He managed a software development company from 2008 to 2022.

Meet the team

Digitalisation doesn’t need to be difficult.

You can do it step by step; the important thing is to get started and learn from your experience.

Our story

March 2024

We're Junge Innovatoren

In March 2024 we were awarded a Junge Innovatoren Grant from the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg to continue our product development (FKZ JI 4001, funding period 1. March 2024 – 28. February 2025).

March 2023

Winners of an EXIST Founder's Stipend

In March 2023 we were awarded an EXIST Business Start-up Grant from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection to develop a new wind lidar management tool (Project “enviConnect”, FKZ 03EGSBW750, 1. March 2023 to 29. February 2024).

At the time, we were operating as part of enviConnect. We’re now a separate business.

Since 2022

A spinoff from the University of Stuttgart

We’re a spinoff from the University of Stuttgart, where Ines and Andy were working at the Chair of Wind Energy at the Institute of Aircraft Design.

We’re mentored by Professor Alex Brem, who leads the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science, and Professor Po Wen Cheng from the Chair of Wind Energy.

Enerlace operates through TTI GmbH

enerlace runs as a “Transfer und Gründerunternehmung” (TGU) through TTI GmbH.

The Technology Transfer Initiative (TTI GmbH) was set up by the University of Stuttgart and other R&D organisations from the Stuttgart region to enable the commercialisation of research.

TTI GmbH provides a framework to support students and employees at the University of Stuttgart and those other R&D organisations during the first steps towards founding their own company.

As ex employees of the University of Stuttgart, setting up a TGU with TTI was the ideal way for Ines and Andy to start a business.

So, in some places you’ll see us refer to TGU enerlace and we send out offers and bills using TTI GmbH as our legal identity.

Aerial view of the University of Stuttgart. Photo by Max Böttinger on Unsplash

A spin-off from the University of Stuttgart