Amsterdam-based Twindo, a wind energy tech startup, announced on Monday, March 27, that it has secured a convertible loan of €300K from the Innovation Fund Noord-Holland.
Twindo says the funding will further aid the development of its platform aimed at solving the inefficiencies in wind energy operations and maintenance.
Jules Shertser, co-founder of Twindo, says, “The investment from the Innovation Fund Noord Holland will be used to develop our proof-of-concept product. This product will be used by market-leading companies in our pilot projects throughout the Netherlands and the world. The feedback from an industry that is in the cost reduction and automation phase was overwhelmingly positive.”
In recent years, the wind energy sector has faced significant challenges when it comes to scaling up. Inefficiencies in operations and maintenance have resulted in a global lag in wind energy projects that has lasted for three years.
Twindo: What you need to know
Twindo, founded in 2021 by Jules Shertser, Frank van Luijn, and Guilherme Marinho, has been working on a platform to combat the issues.
The Twindo platform offers a range of benefits to all stakeholders involved in wind energy
projects. Firstly, it enables companies to complete these projects more quickly, reducing planning and management administration by up to 90 per cent.
Additionally, the system can predict project success more accurately and effectively through machine learning, which captures and uses data.
“I have personally experienced the problems we are solving after a long career in wind energy. It fills me with a deep sense of satisfaction to know that these obstacles will be removed for others in the global market.”
“We feel honoured to work with the INH team and to represent Dutch innovation in clean energy on a global level. The INH investment will create real-world impact as early as the summer of 2023,” adds Shertser.
Twindo’s mission is to be the tool that accelerates the sustainable energy transition and enables every sustainable energy worker to achieve more without having to do more.
Guilherme Marinho says, “We are very happy to have INH as one of our partners. Their contribution is essential to the realisation of Twindo’s mission, starting in the Netherlands and soon globally. We greatly appreciate INH’s interest in understanding and supporting our organisation to thrive, and we look forward to continuing our long-term collaboration with them.”
Frank van Luijn says, “I have been working with technologies for companies active in offshore wind energy for a long time, and have seen the complexity and problems firsthand. It is an honour to finally be able to solve these problems with a truly amazing product.”
The Investor
Innovation Fund Noord-Holland (INH) is an initiative of the Province of Noord-Holland, the University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam UMC, Sanquin, and the Free University, with support from the EU through the European Regional Development Fund. INH has also received support from the REACT EU fund.
INH provides loans from this fund to companies that need financing to prove new ideas and concepts, the so-called ‘Proof-of-Concept’ phase.
Wouter Keij, Fund Manager of Innovation Fund North Holland, says, “In the last 20 years, wind energy has made tremendous strides. Due to the increased scale of wind energy, maintenance has become increasingly challenging. Twindo is developing an innovative information platform to make maintenance and other operational tasks more efficient in managing wind farms. This makes it easier to further scale up wind energy, which directly contributes to the energy transition.”
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