Vaja
Vaja
Proprietary vertical tracking technology for high latitudes
The challenge
Solar farms built beyond ±30° latitude, including all of Europe and large parts of North America and Asia, have long faced a hard trade-off. Vertical solar trackers can capture meaningfully more energy and spread it across a flatter daily production curve, but conventional designs struggle to survive strong winds without heavy, costly structures and a motor on every unit. High wind loads, torque build-up, and aerodynamic instability have made vertical tracking impractical and uneconomical across roughly half the planet.
The solution
Vaja has developed VajaTrack, a vertical solar tracker built on a patented wind-responsive design. In high winds its panels feather passively, lifting toward horizontal using wind force alone and no motors, which removes over 80% of wind loads and eliminates the instabilities that have held vertical tracking back. A minimal-torque architecture and a single centralized drive system, replacing one motor per unit, cut both upfront and lifetime costs. VajaTrack unlocks up to 35% higher energy yields and up to 40% higher revenue uplift versus fixed-tilt and horizontal trackers in high-latitude markets, with a flatter daily production profile. Combined with co-located BESS, this directly counters the solar deflation dynamic - addressing one of the most persistent structural limits on global solar deployment.
Footprint team
- Jakob Wichmann about ?overlay=jakob-wichmann
jmw@thefootprintfirm.com about mailto:jmw@thefootprintfirm.comJakob Wichmann
Co-Founding Partner
Jakob brings extensive expertise as an investor, entrepreneur, CEO, and management consultant, combined with significant international experience. He has served as a responsible partner on more than 200+ projects. He has served clients in international organizations and the private and public sectors on a wide range of issues, albeit always at the intersection between sustainability, research, and strategy. Jakob also serves as a trusted advisor to several senior executives, especially in private equity. He has been heavily engaged in the Footprint Firm investment practice, playing a core role in establishing the Footprint Fund and serving as board chair in several start-ups (Agrain, Klimate, Legacy) as well as leading several investment processes.
He especially thrives in diverse cultural and professional environments, as he has worked as an advisor and investor across the world and across multiple industries, with governments, academia, civil society and international organizations.
In 2011, he founded his own boutique consultancy as a response to the democratic movements in the Middle East and Africa that erupted in step with the Arab Spring revolutions. The company was later merged into Voluntas where Jakob has served as CEO and co-owner, as well as working with the advisory and investment sub-brands contributing to building the organization, growing the business as well as initiating new start-ups and establishing new offices. In 2008, Jakob co-founded the purpose-driven and renewable-only utility Natur-Energi, a company that was sold in 2017 after having built a significant client base.
Jakob holds a Master of Public Theory from University of Essex and a Master of Science in Political Science from the University of Aarhus. His former positions include CEO and Co-founder of Voluntas Group, including Voluntas Advisory and Voluntas Investment, Co-founder of Natur-Energi and other work with the World Bank, DanChurchAid and Epinion.