The story begins with an idea: using the wind to generate electricity. That was how the Enercon company started with its first wind turbine in 1984. Today the business is number one in Germany and a technology leader worldwide.
“A new factory every year,” says Klaus Peters, making it sound as though that was perfectly natural, not a challenge at all. Peters is looking out of the window of his modest first-floor office. Outside, in the business park, the heavy goods vehicles are waiting to be unloaded. Excavators are busy digging up the ground for new business premises. And employees, business partners and customers are looking for parking spaces. For some time now the business park has been too small for this rapidly expanding company. We’re talking about one of the most successful German businesses in the world, however, this time it’s not Mercedes, Siemens or BASF, but Enercon. Founded less than 25 years ago in the small town of Aurich, today the company is Germany’s number one producer of wind turbines and a global technology leader. Peters, a trained mechanic and electrician, has been with the firm from the very beginning and is now in charge of production.The wall of Peters’ office in the Aurich business park is adorned with a number of certificates – awarded for the successful completion of master craftsman examinations and a degree in business administration – that recall the past. Country pennants on the desk document the rapid success of the business. Photographs on a display panel present its international locations. Enercon already made the move to India at the beginning of the 1990s and the company has been engaged in production in Brazil since the mid-1990s and in Turkey since the late 1990s. In 2001 Enercon took over a former submarine shipyard in Sweden and just recently began production in Portugal. The company is currently looking for an appropriate site in Spain. A map of Spain already hangs on the display panel with several slips of papers indicating possible locations.
A decade ago Hermann Simon popularized the term “Hidden Champions” with the bestselling book which introduced readers to the privately owned German world market leaders that were practically unknown outside their respective industries. A new edition was published last year – “and Enercon was one of the firms that impressed me most,” says Simon. In fact, the Aurich-based business is an almost perfect example of a “hidden champion”: it offers an innovative product, exceptional service, strong internationalization and, as a result, a high rate of growth.
One glance from the steel stairway that leads down from Peters’ office into the final assembly area makes clear the dimensions involved: enormous engine houses are assembled in the hall. Weighing in at 75 tonnes, they represent the heart of each turbine. The latest Enercon model, the E-126 with an effective output of 6 megawatts, has a rotor diameter of 126 metres – that explains the model designation. A single rotor blade is longer than the wing of an Airbus A380. Final assembly here is indeed reminiscent of Airbus production – except for the fact that while national interests and international conglomerates are behind the aircraft manufacturer, there is only one man behind Enercon: Aloys Wobben.
In the early 1980s, the founder and owner of the business, which now directly and indirectly provides employment for more than 10,000 people, had the idea of using wind to generate electricity. This turned out to be a visionary idea, because neither technological solutions nor a market for wind energy existed at that time. In 1984, together with Peters, the graduate engineer put together the first windmill in a rented hall in Aurich. Today it still stands in the garden of Wobben’s house on the outskirts of Aurich – supplying the inhabitants with electricity. Wobben’s pioneering spirit drove him to constantly improve the technology until the breakthrough came with the development of the gearless wind turbine – still the unique selling proposition of the Enercon business. Its advantages: less wear and tear, longer service life and lower maintenance needs.
However, their first windmills have practically nothing in common with today’s high-tech installations. Instead of the 55 kilowatts generated by the first limited production model E-15, the 198-metre-high E-126 supplies 18 million kilowatt hours a year – enough electricity for more than 4,500 households. Like Airbus, Enercon has several different models – ranging from the E-33 for inaccessible locations to the bestselling E-70 and E-82 and including the jumbo wind turbine, the E-126. The latter has the now typical Enercon fin-like rotor blades that supply 15% more output than conventional rotors of the same diameter. “That’s revolutionary,” says Peters. Enercon has installed 13,000 wind turbines. They all share the drop-shaped generator housing that was designed by renowned British architect Lord Norman Foster and continues to distinguish Enercon installations from those of other producers. Development is currently taking place on smaller stand-alone models, an E-10 and an E-20, intended for isolated locations.
While Peters manages the overall technological implementation, Wobben, who was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Kassel in 2006, today takes care of technological development and strategy. “Climate protection in Europe,” writes Wobben in Windblatt, the Enercon magazine, “is greatly in need of rapid expansion of the most efficient strategy of avoiding CO2 and that is – renewable energies.” He is committed to a further development of the Renewable Energies Act (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, EEG), which guarantees fixed remuneration rates for operators, thereby enabling the success of companies like Enercon in the first place.
The EEG has been a stroke of luck for Aurich and the region of East Frisia. Favoured with strong coastal winds and thinly populated, the region has attracted a large number of wind farms. Statistically, 90% of East Frisia’s electricity needs are now met by wind power. Furthermore, an “Enercon working group” meets every week in the town hall of the 40,000-inhabitant town to make areas of land available to the company. Economic development specialist Johann Stromann remembers the very beginning, when he was still responsible for individual construction projects. “Eventually a building approval application for a wind turbine landed on my desk, but you couldn’t find anything about them in the building regulations then.” The next higher authority couldn’t find anything either. “If in doubt, reject it” was the view. He outlined his findings to his office superior, who asked first of all what would happen if the turbine fell over. “It will fall into the garden,” said Stromann. “And what’s your view on it?” was the second question. “I think the idea’s not bad,” answered Stromann. “Then approve it,” said his boss. Stromann can thus be regarded as having helped Enercon get started – but that’s now almost ancient history.
