SMA posted a marked year-on-year improvement in sales and earnings in the first half of the year. The Managing Board continues to stand by its targets for the year. We put three questions about this to Chief Executive Officer Jürgen Reinert.
More than 53 million metric tons of electronic waste were accumulated worldwide in 2019. That is equivalent to 100 times the weight of the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This is one consequence of rising consumption, the gradual digitalization of our lifestyles and the diminishing service lives of electrical appliances. But besides materials that are harmful to our health and the environment, electronic waste also contains valuable raw materials that can be sustainably reused.
In the sunny Southwest, students spending their secondary education years at the Albuquerque Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico follow a school philosophy of achieving knowledge that is actionable. This private college preparatory school offers grades 6 through 12 programs that focus on connecting to the natural world. It is in the spirit of preserving the environment and cultivating innovation that the school relies on solar power.
Bernhard Voll wants nothing less than to make a lasting improvement to people’s lives with PV systems. So it’s useful that the SMA expert for PV power plants has a lot of experience and knows all the pitfalls in the implementation of PV projects. Besides this, he is calling for a look at other fields of application to make more diverse use of inverters. He already has some specific ideas.
Emerging economies hold huge potential for the global energy transition. In countries like Ghana and Vietnam, energy demand is rapidly increasing; the source of this power will be decisive in our ability to limit climate change. But in markets that many investors still see as unknown, how can we ensure that renewable energy projects get the funding they need? Trusted technology plays a crucial role.
Thanks to the Fridays for Future movement, sustainability and climate protection are at the top of the political and corporate agenda worldwide. Matthias Schäpers is extremely pleased about this. After all, sustainability is a topic close to his heart – and not only since he started as a sustainability manager at SMA, advancing the company’s sustainability strategy. What annoys him, on the other hand, is companies that only pretend to be sustainable. He knows exactly how to recognize them.
The world’s leading trade fair for the solar industry, Intersolar Europe, had to be cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. With the new event format "Let's talk energy! POWER ON", SMA offered its customers and partners a digital alternative to the Munich trade fair in June. In the livestream, presenter Kimsy von Reischach and top-class experts provided interactive discussions and exciting glimpses behind the SMA scenes.
Stand-alone grids can be found all around the world — at the South Pole and in East Asia, deep in the jungle and in idyllic holiday regions. Solar stand-alone grids provide a stable electricity supply far away from utility grids – often even 100% from renewable energy. They form the basis for sustainable economic development. Isabel Ballesteros-Sanchez has already implemented countless off-grid projects for SMA and inspires optimism for a world full of off-grid systems.
With a large-scale battery storage system, the public utility company Versorgungsbetriebe Bordesholm in northern Germany is able to supply the European utility grid with balancing energy – a lucrative business model. In a unique experiment, the electric utility company and TH Köln, University of Applied Sciences in Germany, proved that the entire region can be supplied with electricity 100 percent from renewable energies. Setting a milestone for the energy transition.
The share of renewable energies in the electricity supply is rising and regenerative power plants such as large PV power plants or battery-storage systems are increasingly coming to the fore in the energy industry. With the SMA Power Plant Manager, these decentralized energy systems do not only meet all the requirements of grid operators, but are also optimally prepared for new energy marketing models.