Dirk Tegtmeyer, Ingenieurbüro Mencke & Tegtmeyer GmbH talks to PES about their slow but sure growth following the central European market collapse and the need for high quality in the solar PV industry….
PES: Welcome back to PES Solar magazine. Thanks for talking with us. Would you like to begin by explaining a little about the background of your organisation and how you currently serve the photovoltaic industry?
Dirk Tegtmeyer: Directly after finishing university my friend Detlef Mencke and I founded the engineers‘ bureau because we wanted to bring our master‘s thesis on to the market, silicon irradiance sensors and I-V curve analysers.1993 was bit premature for this so we got jobs at a solar research institute in Hameln, the ISFH (institute for solar energy research). We worked there for several years, but discovered we are more engineers than scientists. We were very lucky that politicians in Germany wanted to promote PV, because wind energy promotion had been a great success in the years before. The 100,000 roofs program and the feed in tariffs meant our business now had a market and we were one of the first solar/PV companies. We concentrated on quality management and so a small part of the market grew with us. It began with sun simulators and I-V curve analysers for research and development in industry and institutes, small analysers to help of installers and ended up in visualisation and monitoring of installed PV systems using our silicon irradiance sensors. Nowadays we also provide service companies with portable flash-light simulators for testing modules in the field.
