Britain's turbine-entrepreneur goes global
Spotlight on: David Sharman, the unusual CEO (and long-time blogger!) of Ampair Energy that’s just raised serious money to scale up his remarkable “micro-wind” business. A great tale of British innovation.
Ampair wind turbine
"Works in any conditions"
David Sharman is a rare CEO who’s also a long-time blogger. Since 2005, he’s been filing fascinating insights about the growth of Ampair, his family-owned wind turbine manufacturer that joined forces with 50-year-old electricals business, Boost, in 2005.
Sharman’s blog charts the growth of a classic British engineering business, from the painful process of setting up the telephone system, battles with TNT over deliveries, key staff hires and much much more.
Ampair’s key product is the Ampair 6000 turbine. There are close to 30,000 units installed worldwide, from the Antarctic to Alaska, and the Solent to the Sahara, including some of the world’s harshest environments. The firm also provided renewable power sources for 14-year-old sailor Mike Perham’s single-handed round-the-world journey.
Sharman is a former junior Navy officer and professional engineer who ran oil platforms for Shell for ten years. In 2003, he took over Boost and started to build a new, innovation-led British engineering business.
By raising £1.5m from the Sigma 3 fund, Sharman plans to triple the size of the firm’s operations (including a move from Berkshire to Dorset) and create five new jobs. “Our ethic as a business is to develop people”. The firm has a history of taking interns.
Mark Hogarth, investment director at Sigma, told clean energy website NewNet that it was attracted by Ampair’s ability to produce large-scale turbines on the same technology platform as smaller devices.
Ampair can also benefit from UK government incentives that offer financial benefits to clean energy installations under 5MW. “The combination of Ampair’s inherent economics and the feed-in tariffs make the proposition very compelling to the end customer compared with other turbines in the space,” he said. Feed-in tarrifs oblige regional or national electric grid utilities to buy renewable electricity (electricity generated from renewable sources.
Britain’s recovery will rely on innovation-led, growth-minded businesses in cutting-edge technology, which also have international aspirations. Could there be a better template than Ampair…?
You can read David Sharman’s blog here.