Despite a challenging period in the German marketplace, Ingenieurbüro Mencke & Tegtmeyer GmbH endures, with a burgeoning international business and a positive outlook. In this refreshingly-candid interview Dirk Tegtmeyer looks back over the past few years, while casting his eye to a more encouraging future.
PES: Welcome back to the magazine. How has business been since we last spoke?
Dirk Tegtmeyer: Well, our business has become more stable than the low levels we experienced before 2013. 2014 and 2015 seem to be on this stable level, where we mostly have customers outside the EU. We have several German monitoring companies, who we supply with our silicon irradiance sensors, but they also export the most of their equipment to the rest of the world. I think the market will rise worldwide, and we will be able to be a major part of this market in the future.
PES: And what’s the market like in Germany right now? Are you getting the regulatory and governmental support you need?
DT: The German market is nearly dead, and even the research institutes are struggling to get projects, while the co-funding of companies is missing. Many of the German solar PV companies fell into insolvency during the last two years and even the companies that got new investors in 2014, are bankrupt again in 2015. The help from government is nearly zero, while the ministry of economics is mainly focussed on coal energy.
PES: Can you tell us about a notable planning project that you’ve been involved with, and how you met the challenges you were presented with?
DT: Planning projects are at a very low number these days, while the installation of PV has dropped down to less than the level the government had aimed for. So we have only had one project during the last few months, which was for the ISFH, the research institute in our neighbourhood (Institute for Solar Energy Research Hameln/Emmerthal). It was a project for getting their power peak decreased with PV.
