We’ve tracked the continued success of Kipp & Zonen for a while in PES and indeed, have interviewed several of the company’s executives. In this issue, we headed back to The Netherlands for an interview with Paulien Adema (Business Manager), during which she discussed new products, global expansion and an increased focus on accuracy…
PES: Welcome back to the magazine. How has business been since we
last spoke?
Paulien Adema: Business has been
good thanks to our worldwide coverage, which means that we can stabilise business in the more saturated markets and grow
our sales in developing markets. As the leading supplier of solar radiation monitoring equipment for meteorology and climatology for over ninety years, our products are very well known and often used as a de facto standard.
Everyone knows the national meteorology institute and the larger research organisations in their country, so if these are your reference users, any new customer feels reassured.
PES: Instruments for monitoring solar radiation have been in use for almost a hundred years. To what extent has the technology evolved?
PA: The measurement technique of a thermopile pyranometer has not changed much since we started making them in 1924, but the demands of the solar energy market mean that sensors have to react faster, and must be easier to use, simpler to exchange and require less maintenance. The growing need is for plug-and-play instruments with very accurate results, because a few percent of error can result in large impacts on financial calculations and the potential return on investment.
This has led to the development of our SMP range of smart pyranometers with built-in microcontrollers, which combine enhanced performance and functionality with industry standard interfaces.
