COMPANY PROFILE
2014
BayWa r.e.
+49 35456 6746 0 | www.baywa-re.com
The integrated green approach Editorial: Christian Jordan
Since its formation in 2009, BayWa r.e. has striven to offer the best in advice and support regarding innovative, tailor-made solutions to ensure profitable long-term generation of solar energy, wind power, bio-energy and geothermal energy.
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“BayWa r.e. was established in 2009, by BayWa AG, at a point in time when they had been looking for additional business, having realised that their traditional energy business – trading off heat and oil – was no longer a viable growth market. For that reason, they decided to go down the route of renewables and began to acquire companies in this field. One of the first companies was RENERCO AG, a project development company where I have been CEO for around 10 years. Step by step other companies have been added, covering a wide range of
activities in the business fields wind, solar, bio-energy and geothermal energy,” explains Matthias Taft, now CEO of BayWa re. “At the beginning of 2013 we began our re-branding in order to unite this conglomerate of individual companies under the common brand “BayWa r.e.”. Most of the companies were rebranded by the end of last year; as such we appear in the market as one company under the umbrella ‘BayWa r.e.’ which we regard as important for the communication with our customers and project partners. The last five years has seen BayWa r.e. develop into one of the most well-respected project developers and system suppliers of PV plants throughout Germany and the rest of Europe, supplementing this through such support systems as providing consultation and system management services to its many and varied customers. The range of services also includes trading of renewable energy power, trading in biomethane as well as the sale of eco power and eco gas to private and commercial customers in Germany. Its specialisms in renewable technologies span a vast range, with activities extending through many countries – at present, operations are targeted within Germany, Europe and the USA. Its tireless work has brought it to its position as one of Europe’s leading suppliers in this sector, having already brought more than one gigawatt online in partnership with its customers. The future of energy undeniably belongs to renewable sources, and BayWa r.e.’s central aim is to use its status in such a way as to promote an increase, at a global level, in the use of these renewable energies. Ever since being founded as a cooperative back in 1923, BayWa
AG’s central aim has been to meet fundamental human needs, through its core values of trust, reliability and innovation. BayWa r.e.’s strong sense of social responsibility is one of its most important facets, and manifests itself in a variety of ways in its everyday operations. More than simply generating power in a natural way, the company is optimising by installing PV rooftop plants on some of the established sites of BayWa AG, with its core business sectors of agriculture, construction and energy, to using renewable energy. Further the BayWa foundation is maintaining a significant engagement in social projects abroad, in the fields of energy and nutrition, for example, planning of off-grid photovoltaic plants and construction of plants in such countries as Tanzania and Romania.
INTEGRATED APPROACH BayWa r.e.’s capabilities span across the full spectrum of renewables, as Taft details. “We have business in wind, solar,
Matthias Taft
bioenergy and geothermal power plants. However, the future will see us focus primarily on wind and solar, as well as the possibility of more business in bioenergy. We’ll do this with a focus on the two main pillars of our business – the project side and the trading side – and all the services around these core businesses, such as planning, consulting, asset management and trading of energy.” Keen to point out that BayWa r.e. is not an independent power producer, or indeed a utility, Taft goes on to underline the company’s place within this burgeoning sector. “Our business strategy is to develop, to build the power plants and to operate them for a certain time before selling them to institutional or private investors. We call this the BOOT-strategy. As we are no manufacturer, we are not dependent on the highly competitive PV module market
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for example. We focus on the project and PV trading business. This implies that we can choose the most suitable technology in order to realize our wind and solar projects. Our comprehensive service portfolio enables us to maximise the margins of the projects, as we have all the necessary know-how in-house which means that we can realize and maintain projects in a cost-effective way. As single point of contact for our customers we can ensure that quality is the very best, while obtaining the best price for the technological products needed for the projects.” A fully integrated approach, Taft sums up succinctly BayWa r.e.’s role as that of, “a full service provider. As such, we have all the resources, access to investors, to panel suppliers, and we deliver the whole system firstly to the project, and then to the
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“It is affordable for almost everybody, and engenders that positive thinking in people that green energy allows them to live in a cleaner world”
customer.” Earlier this year came the announcement of BayWa r.e.’s intent to buck an extremely undesirable trend within Germany’s power sector. Although most power supply utilities had held back on price increases at the beginning of the year, a report from Focus Online showed that at least 32 power suppliers in Germany had raised their prices with effect from the beginning of April, with tariffs in fact having started to creep up in February. Matthias Taft details how the company will be bypassing any such unpleasant increases; “Despite the ‘EEG’ levy, we will not implement any price increase any time soon. Those deciding in favour of ‘BayWa Ökostrom’ will benefit from stable prices for either 12 or 24 months. This offers our customers long term security to
BayWa r.e.
TSK BUILDS 45MWp FOR BAYWA IN FRANCE Spanish EPC firm TSK recently built five solar photovoltaic plants with a total power of 45MWp for German company BAYWA Renewable Energy in the southwest of France. The five projects, located in the French towns of Graulhet, Salles, Saucats, Rion des Landes and Lue, were built over a period of 9 months, with the first project breaking ground in September 2013 and the last one connecting to the grid in April 2014. The five projects used 60-cell polycrystalline modules mounted on a fix-tilt system, designed by TSK, using 1MW centralized inverters. The expertise of TSK –building PV plants over the past decade in several countries throughout the world- combined with the solid know-how of BAYWA in the field made it possible for the five projects to be successfully set up and put into commercial operational in such a short period of time. Since last spring, there are 45 MWp of clean energy being injected into the EDF system. These five projects have indeed contributed to reinforcing the strong relationship between the two Companies, which are currently looking into expanding their common business opportunities in different areas of the world. TSK is global private company based in Gijón –Asturias– Spain. In 2013, TSK had a turnover of €490M in Sales, with an EBITDA over €75M, and €291M in Equity. TSK is present in most of the Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia, as well as in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. The internal organization of the company is designed around three large areas: Electrical Infrastructures, Handling, and Energy & Industrial Plants. In 2013, TSK concluded the acquisition of the German company Flagsol. With this acquisition, TSK reinforced its technological leadership internationally in the field of solar thermal energy, where Flagsol is a pioneer in the design and construction of this type of plant. Flagsol is not the first German technology company to join TSK, as in 1995 we acquired PHB Weserhütte, another German company with its own technology in the design and supply of facilities for processing minerals, today one of the most internationally recognized companies in this sector. PAGE 5
plan ahead, which is decisive when selecting an electricity tariff that suits.” BayWa Ökostrom has proven an extremely successful concept, garnering numerous awards to put its tariffs among the front runners of a total of 30 tested. Crucially, BayWa Ökostrom also holds the Ok-Power quality seal, awarded by the Freiburg Eco Institute and the NRW Consumer Centre to guarantee that the green sources of power selected really do provide effective environmental and wildlife protection, and that all is conducted with a high degree of transparency for the consumer’s benefit.
BIOMETHANE BayWa r.e.’s collaboration with the Mannheim-based energy group MVV Energie has resulted in a joint investment totalling more than 14 million euros, joining forces in a high-efficiency biomethane plant in Stassfurt, in the Magdeburger Börde region. With its electrical capacity of around three megawatts, this biomethane plant will ferment around 62,000 tonnes of substrate a year, a mix which helps to avoid monocultures and thus prove particularly beneficial from an ecological perspective. The resultant biogas will be purified on location into biomethane of natural gas quality, and processed into electricity in decentralised combined heat and power plants, with the resulting green electricity enough to supply a theoretical total of 6,000 families. “Having developed the project, getting all the required contracts in place for the feedstock and obtaining the necessary building permits, we sold the majority to MVV Energie. Together with them we are now running this plant,” explains Taft. Construction work has already begun on the project, of which MVV
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Energie owns 74.9 percent of the plant and BayWa r.e. holds a 25.1 percent stake, and from May 2015 the plant should feed bionatural gas resulting from environmentallyfriendly generation into the public grid, with both companies seeking to recruit new employees from the Stassfurt region where technical operations will be performed.
“We are a full service provider we deliver the whole system firstly to the project, and then to the customer.” GLOBAL EXPANSION BayWa r.e. recognises a certain recent shrinking of some of its markets in Europe, due to in part to the low available tariffs, which represents a key challenge for the company to negotiate. “We will compensate for that by going overseas,” states Taft. “We just closed a deal with Martifer Solar, which represents another foothold in the USA for us, and this acquisition fits in perfectly with our solar trading business which operates under the name “Focused Energy, LLC”. We are confident that for the next years the US solar business will remain stable, or even grow. We will have a definite focus on the United States, in both the commercial and the utility scale sectors, as well as in the utility scale sector, whilst enhancing our wholesale PV business. Depending somewhat on the extension of the
PTC for wind energy projects, we are also prepared to do more in this sector.” Like many of its fellows, BayWa r.e. is also looking at expansions into such countries as South Africa, Japan and, in the mid-term, South America and Asia. “There are some very high feed in tariffs to come by in Japan right now, although getting projects here and setting foot into this market is difficult. The growth figures are very promising for South America and Asia. The location of our solar project business in California can function as a hub for Mexico and Latin America, to participate in the growth in these markets. We see the big solar project business not as much in Europe, but more in the US and the rest of the world.” A wholesale push towards a greener, more environmentally friendly approach to business is, after all, only to be welcomed, according to Taft. “I think even 20 years ago, the ‘green’ pioneers were seen as crazy people – it was never a viable business opportunity. There has been a definite shift, which has seen big companies get involved, and the public also now believes that this is the right way for our future. Renewables also have a real chance when we look at Africa and South America, places which are still very hungry to get more of this energy. For these people it is expensive, especially when they live in remote regions, to obtain energy via diesel generators for example, so for them it would be a huge opportunity to replace that with renewable energies. From the business plans we have already seen this is most certainly a viable option, which is both attractive and profitable. It is affordable for almost everybody, and engenders that positive thinking in people that green energy allows them to live in a cleaner world.”
BayWa r.e.
+44 (0) 1603 411569 info@totalworldenergy.com East Coast Promotions Ltd, 2 Ardney Rise Norwich, Norfolk NR3 3QH
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