With a symbolic push of the red button, the large power plant within the prison walls will be connected officially to the grid of the municipal utility Stadtwerke Brandenburg an der Havel. In the future, the park will supply close to 1.5 kilowatt hours of environmentally friendly solar energy for some 400 households in the region. But it is not only the solar power that will come from the region: the components and the installation are also Made in Brandenburg.
The Berlin company BATEG Energy GmbH is the principal and general contractor of the solar power plant, and it relies on Conergy quality for the project. We want to set a clear signal for Brandenburg as a solar location with this project, said Hasan Kaygusuz, Managing Partner of BATEG Energy. To this end we made a point of choosing high-quality, locally manufactured components and commissioning local companies with all the installation work. We are investing a total of around 3 million euros entirely from our own funds in this solar plant; and with the locally founded special-purpose company we are also making sure that the tax revenues will flow directly into the region.
We are very pleased to participate in this prestigious project, which represents solar quality from Germany from A to Z, just as Conergy does, said Stefan Balbierz, Managing Director of Conergy in Germany. Thanks to our extensive experience, we are a reliable partner whom our customers put their trust in.
The 4.5 hectare site an area larger than that of the terminal of the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport is located between the old and the new prison walls. It used to be part of the prison premises and housed a repair facility. The old siding tracks are still there. But instead of rolling stock being repaired here, some 6,700 Conergy PowerPlus modules installed on the site are now generating clean solar energy, which is fed into the grid via 90 Conergy IPG T inverters. The environment of the entire region benefits at the same time: The solar park prevents around 1,300 tons of the damaging greenhouse gas CO2 being produced each year corresponding to the annual emissions from some 650 cars.
But the solar energy transition is not only happening on the prison site; it is in full swing all over Brandenburg. Over the past six years alone the amount of solar energy produced in the federal state has increased by a factor of nineteen. In this region, the sun already supplies some 86,000 households today and there is still a great deal of potential; especially on Brandenburgs roofs there are many unused surfaces that are ideally suited for solar energy generation. Only six percent of the nine gigawatt roof surface potential is currently being used to generate solar power in Brandenburg, said Stefan Balbierz. This shows: the solar future is on the roof and Conergy is very well placed in this area. We have been offering fully-integrated roof-top systems from a single source for many years.
