PES has an exclusive interview with Jörg Scholz, CEO, Gantner Instruments Environment Solutions GmbH. The solar/PV industry is expanding and his company has just the solution for measurement and control of all parameters of utility scale PV power plants. They are already in Egypt and Australia. He is optimistic and confident about the future.
PES: Welcome back to PES Solar/PV magazine. Thanks for talking with us. For the benefit of our newer readers, would you like to begin by explaining a little about the background of Gantner Instruments Environment Solutions and the importance of the Solar/PV industry to you?
Jörg Scholz: Gantner is a market-leading full solution provider for utility scale PV power plants. We develop and produce hardware and software for measurement and control of all required parameters in such plants. All solutions and services are ‘Made in Germany’. Our web portal software is designed to manage even the large size PV plant portfolios. All these solutions are supported by our O&M activities giving us the possibility of offering high quality products worldwide with local service. While our offerings are tailored for the PV industry, they are also very pertinent to other energy sectors.
PES: Are you still experiencing growth in this market?
JS: Yes, we are experiencing significant growth in PV in most geographical regions. Thanks to the decreasing costs of solar energy production and an increasing global awareness of the advantages of clean energy, we are confident that this trend will continue for several years. Now application of solar energy is not only justified by its advantages to the environment, but it has also become economically competitive.
PES: We have been hearing about your success in Egypt and we would love to know more about it. How did it begin? How has it grown?
JS: We implemented our first project in Egypt in the Benban region with German EPC ib vogt. After successful, on schedule, commissioning of the first 64.1MW solar power plant in December 2017, we were repeatedly chosen as the supplier for the complete monitoring system for the next three plants in the Benban complex with a total of 166.5MW. For these plants we provided Q.reader as both data logger and power plant controller, dc combiner boxes, meteo stations and Gantner.webportal.
Commissioning of the first power plant was performed onsite by our engineers. Remote support is provided via a high security connection with help of ‘Gantner.RAS’. Gantner.RAS is a remote access service for global fleet management of onsite DAQ devices.
