Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster recognises outstanding inventors in the wind industry Presentation of the German Renewables Award 2016 during WindEnergy Hamburg

Three decades of influential wind turbine development, extremely fast energy storage facilities for decentralised energy systems, optimisation of turbulence properties in wind farms – the three winners of this year’s German Renewables Award work tirelessly for the continued success of the energy transition. They are now being rewarded for these outstanding achievements by a specialist jury consisting of eight proven experts from the renewable energy sector.

Jan Rispens, Director of the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster, commented as follows on the awards: “Curiosity and inventiveness, perseverance and engineering expertise continue to characterise our renewable energy sector. The projects and persons recognised today once again demonstrate this in an outstanding way. Every one of our award winners demonstrates the innovativeness of the industry that is apparent at the WindEnergy trade fair this week.”

Lifetime Achievement in Wind Energy

50 patent families, 27 wind turbines – wind pioneer Sönke Siegfriedsen can look back on a unique success story. The founder of Aerodyn Engineering from Rendsburg built his first wind turbine on the roof of his University of Applied Sciences in 1979. Today, he focuses on floating offshore turbines with just two rotor blades, for use in particular in South-East Asia, a region plagued by typhoons. For his unparalleled global contribution to the development of wind energy technology, the 2016 Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster jury is presenting him with the 2016 German Renewables Award in the “Lifetime Achievement in Wind Energy” category.

Product Innovation

Stable electricity grids in spite of a high percentage of electricity from renewable energy sources – that is precisely what the Ultracapacitor Grid Stabilizer by Freqcon GmbH, winner in the category “Product Innovation of the Year,” achieves. It is an innovative energy storage system based on dual-layer capacitors, which guarantees a rapid grid frequency measurement with a time resolution of roughly one millisecond and an extremely rapid and high-performance energy transfer when required. The storage system can be installed both in inverters for wind turbines and PV systems.

Student Paper on Wind Energy                                     

In his master’s thesis, Nils Gerke from the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, evaluated measurement data from wind farms to calculate wake turbulences. Wake turbulences are defined as trailing winds slower than the wind upstream of the turbine. As part of his thesis, he developed a method to exactly evaluate the wind measurement data from a wind farm using a SCADA system. This has earned him the German Renewables Award in the “Student Paper of the Year on Wind Energy“.