Outstanding personalities and innovative renewable energies projects nominated 61 applications for the German Renewables Award 2014

Power from sea waves, a decentralised energy supply for cities, a cost reduction model for offshore projects, the 61 applications for the German Renewables Award 2014 impress with their variety of topics and their high level of innovation. For the first time, the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster is not only awarding the prize in the “Product Innovation of the Year” and “Project of the Year” categories, but also for “Student Thesis, Wind” and “Lifetime Achievement, Wind”. The awards ceremony will be held during the international WindEnergy Hamburg 2014 trade fair on 23 September 2014 in the famous Hamburg fish auction hall.

“Renewables have become a central sector in northern Germany and in the Hamburg metropolitan region. As head of the northern German region and the Hamburg study centre of the Frankfurt School, I enjoy working with the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster. The German Renewables Award is an important prize. It is a pleasure to watch the committed ‘tinkerers’ and ‘thinkers’ and see how their ideas develop,” said jury member Rüdiger Theophil, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management GmbH. Together with seven other jury members from business and science, he will be selecting the four prize-winners.

“Product Innovation of the Year”:

In the “Product Innovation of the Year” category, ideas range from systems for generating power from waves to methods for detecting birds close to wind turbines and computer programmes that show the availability of means of transporting offshore components. Overall, there are nine applications in this category. In 2013, the jury nominated the storage system from the Breisgau company ASD Automatic Story Device GmbH, which is able to store both solar power and power from combined heat and power units, as being the “Product Innovation of the Year”.

“Project of the Year”:

How can modern companies supply themselves with self-generated energy? How does a city feed renewable power and heat into its grid in a decentralised way? These issues, and others, were tackled by the 18 applications for the “Project of the Year” category. In 2013, Spitzner Engineers GmbH from Hamburg won the “German Renewables Award” in this category with a new-style wing design that is able to generate a clear increase in performance when retrofitting existing wind turbines.

“Student Thesis, Wind”:

Studies on technical developments in wind energy and the cost reduction potential for offshore wind farms are among the topics of the final papers submitted in the “Student Thesis, Wind” category. Six pieces of work have been submitted for selection in this category.

“Lifetime Achievement, Wind”:

28 politicians, technical pioneers, personalities from the business world, association representatives and scientists who have committed their professional life work to the development of the wind energy sector in Germany have been nominated for the category “Lifetime Achievement, Wind”. In 2013, the German Renewables Award for lifetime achievement in the field of renewables went to Dr Hartwig Westphalen, founder of SunEnergy Europe GmbH.

For more information, please see:
www.eehh.de/gere/german-renewables.html