Always one step ahead of the time Interview with Dr Thorsten Granzow, Site Manager at Enlite Management & Engineering GmbH

Renewable Energy Hamburg: Your company’s philosophy is: “Always one step of ahead of the time”. What made you choose this, and what exactly does it mean?

Dr Thorsten Granzow: Our aim is always to be one step ahead of our competitors and customers. We try to implement this by offering all our ENLITE staff at least six days of customer and project-specific training and further training each year. In this way, we have been successful in generating measurable added value for our customers because we are better able to assess developments. We follow the latest changes on the market and constantly exchange information with our customer to identify their needs.

Renewable Energy Hamburg: You handle more than 100 consultancy projects each year – an impressive figure. In exactly which renewable energy fields are you currently progressing? Could you name a few examples of projects?

Dr Thorsten Granzow: “Our customers are producers of electricity and heat, suppliers of electricity, gas, district heating and cooling and water, transmission grid operators and operators of data and IT infrastructure. Examples of renewable energy projects include:

Energy producers

• Project office for the construction of a biomass hot water system (boiler)
• Project office for an organisation project that enables a standardised, digitalised optimisation of a variety of wind energy platform technologies across different sites

Energy suppliers

• Project office for the construction of a PEM (proton exchange membrane) electrolyser (17.5&60;MW), hydrogen storage and compressor for combined operation with a gas and steam turbine
• Support for a publicly funded project for the construction of a high-temperature heat pump on site at the central cooling plant of an energy supplier

Transmission grid operators

• Project office for a hybrid interconnector: the offshore wind farms are integrated in an interconnector between two states
• Project office for a project for overhead transmission operation dependent upon the weather conditions: optimise overhead transmission operation dependent on wind, outside temperature etc.

Renewable Energy Hamburg: How is onboarding being carried out during the corona pandemic?

Dr Thorsten Granzow: “Regardless of corona, we have a multi-stage application process. HR gives the candidates access to an internal portal for managerial staff with the help of predefined criteria, provided the conditions are met; otherwise, they are rejected. Depending on seniority, we have also held in-person interviews, under corona-related restrictions, in our large meeting rooms in Berlin or Hamburg. We present the contract package in a telephone conversation. A summary of the contents is then emailed to the person. An exchange is made by post following agreement.

Virtually all of our staff worked from home over the course of 2020 and continue to do so now. We have therefore been forced to carry out our onboarding (almost) exclusively online from the first working day. Several new members of staff received their equipment (Surface, iPhone) in a package. The devices were preconfigured to allow staff to enter their user names and passwords and use them straight away. In some cases, we had already set up meetings in Outlook even before their first working day. There is already an email in their Outlook inbox with information about the onboarding process that the new member of staff undergoes. HR staff and the line manager will contact the new member of staff one to two weeks prior to their start date to make the initial arrangements. The onboarding process has therefore become more extensive as a result.

We welcomed 23 new members of staff to the sites in Berlin, Hamburg and Essen last year. One further new member of staff will join us in Hamburg on 15 January 2021 this year; further contracts have already been signed for Hamburg.

Renewable Energy Hamburg: One of your topics is the much-cited digitalisation that played a greater role in 2020 than ever before. What trends do you see in renewable energies in this area?

Dr Thorsten Granzow: We are seeing the following trends:

• Greater data analysis and performance monitoring of assets
• Status analyses and action planning based on these analyses
• Development of digital twins and BIM (building information modelling: a digital image of a building structure in a database/in a model)
• IT systems for weather-dependent overhead transmission operation
• Global digitalisation and IT strategies as standards for optimising the operation of wind parks

https://www.enlite.de/