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Nominees for Hamburg’s Renewables Award work on key issues of the energy transition 43 applications for the German Renewables Award 2015

Energy self-sufficient houses and novel storage solutions — the applications for the German Renewables Award 2015 impressed with innovation and creativity, and a focus on the current needs of the renewable energy industry. The jury shortlisted three nominees each, from a total of 43 applications, for the award categories “Product Innovation of the Year”, “Project of the Year” and “Student Thesis of the Year” and selected a “Lifetime Achievement” category winner. The award ceremony of the German Renewables Award 2015 will take place during the five-year anniversary celebration of the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster on 3 December, 2015, held in the Empire Riverside Hotel Hamburg.

“The energy transition, the project of the century, can only succeed if the renewable energy industry retains its courage and inventiveness. The applications submitted in the fourth year of the German Renewables Award clearly demonstrate that the industry’s stakeholders continue to work tirelessly, creatively and successfully towards a successful energy transition. We are proud that our expert jury will award the best among them as part of our five-year anniversary celebration,” said Jan Rispens, Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster’s Managing Director.

The further utilisation of surplus energy and heat was the dominant topic of the submissions in the “Product Innovation of the Year” category. Applications ranged from the ultra-modern Siemens AG electrolyser to the home energy storage system for solar power from EWE. A (ORC) system from DeVeTec for generating electricity from waste heat produced by renewable energy sources also impressed the jury. A total of 14 companies competed in this category.

The Hamburg project WindGas of HanseWerk AG is working on a solution for the question of how surplus wind power could be converted to gas. The role of intelligent storage systems and operating strategies for local power supply is the focus of SmartRegion Pellworm, a HanseWerk and Schleswig-Holstein Netz GmbH project. An energy self-sufficient house from Solarnova fitted with a combination of PV rooftop and facade panels is one of the three nominees in this category. The six applications in the category “Project of the Year” reflect an impressive array of renewable energy topics.

In the category “Student Thesis of the Year”, Thomas Kohlsche, TU Hamburg-Harburg, dealt with the acoustic modelling of impulse hammers in offshore wind farms for an easier calculation of noise emissions. Florian Roscheck, FH Flensburg, programmed new welding techniques on a robot used in the production of wind turbine towers. And prolonging the lifetime of power electronics components was the subject of the thesis of Christian Falck, University of Kiel. A total of eleven graduates competed in the category. The German Renewables Award for the best “Student Thesis of the Year” is endowed with 5,000 euros.

In the category “Lifetime Achievement”, the jury chose one winner from a total of twelve nominees. Since 2012, the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster has been presenting the German Renewables Award in four categories. In odd-numbered years, the award ceremony takes place within the framework of the leading international trade fair WindEnergy Hamburg. The jury consists of eight high-ranking representatives of the renewable energy industry.

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