Winds of change: New wind energy tech developed by European startups

People don’t just fly kites for fun. At a test site near Munich, engineers recently launched an electricity-generating, box-style kite fitted with small, wind-catching rotors. The contraption, tethered to the ground by a hefty cable, flew repeatedly in a predetermined figure of eight — its rotors spinning in the wind. “The wind speed is a couple of times higher than that a conventional wind turbine would see,” says Maximilian Isensee, chief executive of Kitekraft, explai