The next phase of the energy transition

One energy ahead since 30 years

At ENERTRAG, the energy transition began over 30 years ago. In 1992, company founder Jörg Müller commissioned the company's first wind turbine in the Uckermark region. Already back then, ENERTRAG was one energy ahead.  

At a time when hardly anyone had any idea how wind and solar power would one day shape the energy system, Jörg Müller and his team recognised that the use of renewable energies was the only way to secure the energy supply for the world of tomorrow.

Energy transition means future

ENERTRAG is convinced that it is possible to generate all the energy required from renewable sources at low cost and at the same time reduce energy consumption by 70 percent. The way to achieve this is through the energy transition. Energy costs will fall and rural areas will become more attractive because wind and solar power mean lots of well-paid jobs.

Never before has this vision been so progressive and without alternative - especially as current energy prices, the finite nature of fossil fuels and the dependence of electricity supplies on imports dramatically underline the urgency of the issue. In short, the world needs renewables. The world needs an energy transition. Right now!

A pioneer of the energy transition

The energy transition is more than just renewable electricity. ENERTRAG has a clear vision and is working at full speed to efficiently combine electricity, heat and mobility in all sectors. To achieve this, ENERTRAG utilises wind and solar energy as well as the production of green hydrogen. There are only a few energy companies in the world with comparable expertise in this area.  

In recent years, ENERTRAG has developed energy technology solutions for each individual sector. Today, the company is able to heat with surplus wind power, decarbonise road and rail transport with hydrogen from renewable energy sources and supply industries with clean chemical products and green hydrogen.

As a pioneer of the Verbundkraftwerk, ENERTRAG has never had any contact with fossil energies and can replace the demand-driven, predictable energy supply of fossil power plants 100 per cent.

The ENERTRAG energy areas

ENERTRAG is focussing on a secure energy supply from wind and solar sources and the production of green hydrogen. Few have mastered this combination like ENERTRAG.

Wind power

Wind power provides an unlimited source of renewable energy and is essential to the global transition to clean energy.  

As technology advances, it is possible to harness the wind more efficiently and produce higher yields. Modern wind turbines are becoming taller and have longer rotor blades. As the wind blows more frequently and more strongly at higher altitudes, wind turbines can produce more electricity. For a long time, wind turbines achieved less than 2,000 full-load hours per year, but now values of 4,000 full-load hours are common, even in inland areas.

As one of the pioneers in Germany and now one of the largest wind energy producers in Europe, ENERTRAG develops, builds and operates wind turbines worldwide and integrates them as main components in Verbundkraftwerken.

70% of ENERTRAG's turbines in Germany can provide all legally required system services, thus making a significant contribution to improving grid stability.

ENERTRAG can also use peak production from wind turbines that cannot be used in the electricity grid to supply heat. Instead of shutting down the turbines completely in extreme cases, the electricity is used to heat water in the heat storage system, allowing wind power to be stored as thermal energy.

ENERTRAG uses wind power in the Verbundkraftwerk for the sustainable generation of large amounts of electrical energy. Day and night.

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Photovoltaics  

The expansion of solar parks is a focal point of the energy transition: This is because the sun provides inexhaustible amounts of energy. In Northern Europe, the amount of energy that reaches the earth's surface each year is around 1,000 kWh per square metre. That is 10,000,000 kWh per hectare.

For over 20 years, ENERTRAG has been working on solutions for the energy transition, of which PV power is a central component. In addition to climate-friendly electricity generation, PV projects offer attractive income opportunities, e.g. in the form of leases and shareholdings. The ecosystem, the communities and the regional economy also benefit.

In the ENETRAG Verbundkarftwerk^®, photovoltaics can be used as a component for generating clean electrical energy during the day.

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Green hydrogen

Green hydrogen is the long missing piece of the energy transition puzzle. It is a clean energy carrier, producing no CO2 when burned, only water vapour.  

Green hydrogen can be used to store electricity and transfer energy from the sun and wind to the heating, transport and industrial sectors. It can be used to make carbon-neutral steel, in refineries, or to produce high-value carbon-neutral derivatives such as paraffin, ammonia or methanol.  

By storing unneeded electricity, intermittent renewable generation can be taken off the grid and made available for other applications.

Hydrogen production (power-to-gas) and heat extraction (power-to-heat) from power generation plants is a basic component of a renewable energy system and therefore makes a key contribution to making systems more flexible and stable.

ENERTRAG has tackled these issues early and started to produce green hydrogen in 2008 and to store wind heat in 2020.

ENERTRAG is now developing green hydrogen projects for all industrial sectors worldwide and offers tailor-made solutions for hydrogen supply and hard-to-abate sectors, i.e. areas that are particularly difficult to de-fossilise.  

The production of green hydrogen in electrolysers and the storage of renewable energy in a coupled hydrogen storage system are part of the ENETRAG's Verbundkarftwerk^®.

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The tree phases of the energy transition 

Switching to renewable energies is the biggest possible energy efficiency measure. A fossil energy system with 70 percent losses will become a renewable system with 70 percent efficiency - i.e. only 30 per cent losses.  

The energy transition takes place in three phases, which depend largely on the degree of expansion of renewable energy generation. The prerequisites: A renewable energy system consisting of wind power and photovoltaics, supplemented by hydrogen and heat storage and stabilised by batteries. 

In the first phase, every kilowatt hour of wind or solar power can simply be fed into the existing grids, displacing fossil-fuelled generation. In the second phase, renewable electricity will penetrate all energy sectors via storable energy sources. The initial fluctuations in the electricity grid decrease again as the storage systems absorb the fluctuating supply. In the third phase, renewable energies also take over the bottleneck supply of electricity by reconverting the then abundant hydrogen into electricity, thus replacing the last fossil-fuelled power plants.