Dirk Tegtmeyer, co-founder of Ingenieurbüro Mencke & Tegtmeyer GmbH is an old friend of ours at PES. He tells us about the development of the PV industry and the importance of quality through the whole value chain. During the pandemic IMT made small changes to their work routines, which allowed them to carry on developing and producing their temperature sensors.

PES: Welcome back to PES Solar/PV, Dirk, it’s great to have this opportunity to catch up with you. For the benefit of our new readers would you like to begin by giving us a brief overview of IMT?

Dirk Tegtmeyer: We started in July 1993 as the first spin-off of Institut für Solarenergieforschung (ISFH, Institute for Solar Energy Research) the founders were Detlef Mencke and myself. We wanted to bring our master thesis to the market, silicon irradiance sensor with internal irradiance signal temperature compensation, steady-state sun simulators and I-V curve analyzers for PV.

IMT first started to expand in 1999, with first employee, Nikolai Maris, who is also now an associate. Until 2011 our expansion was continual. It slowed a little in 2012 and 2013 because of the German politics on renewables. Since then we have increased our export quota massively and therefore stabilized and got back to the size we were in 2011.

We produce our own temperature sensors for ambient and module temperature measurement and optimized the uncertainty of our Si sensors to better than double before. All big monitoring companies worldwide use our silicon irradiance sensors.

We also install complete measuring systems for research institutes and industry. Our I-V curve analyser PV-KLA is used in laboratories, as well as in automatically driven multiplexing systems, where up to 32 PV modules can be measured outdoor in real weather conditions to get a comparison of their real yield.

PES: Would you say the solar/PV market is currently expanding even during the current difficult global situation?

DT: Of course, the PV market worldwide is increasing and therefore it is also a growing for IMT. It is a very nice feeling that renewable energies can compete with the old energy monopoly, and hopefully can make the world a better place. Renewable energies, not the components, are mostly produced locally, so that the people have the advantage directly within their region.

We at IMT therefore love the rise PV solar systems for achieving more renewable energy and so more independence from oil and gas. And at least we have a part in all the PV systems being built with monitoring systems, by delivering our irradiance and temperature sensors.

The actual global situation does not affect PV installations too much, because all workers on PV systems are outdoors, where the restrictions can be met a lot easier than indoors.