STEAG strength­ens its com­pe­ten­cies in the areas of dig­i­tal­iza­tion and renew­able ener­gies: The Essen-based ener­gy com­pa­ny becomes a co-part­ner in Solyt­ic GmbH. The Berlin-based start-up offers cloud-based, man­u­fac­tur­er- and hard­ware-inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware for pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems. By means of this soft­ware solu­tion, the per­for­mance of the PV sys­tems can be con­trolled and thus their eco­nom­ic effi­cien­cy can be increased. Due to the steadi­ly grow­ing com­mit­ment of the STEAG Group in the field of pho­to­voltaics for sev­er­al years, STEAG and Solyt­ic have now decid­ed to join forces for mutu­al benefit.

With this invest­ment, STEAG is tak­ing account of all three cur­rent mega­trends in the ener­gy indus­try: dig­i­tal­iza­tion, decar­boniza­tion and decen­tral­iza­tion. “STEAG has in-depth ener­gy domain exper­tise as well as a long-stand­ing com­mit­ment to dig­i­tal­iza­tion, and Solyt­ic brings a spe­cial­ized solu­tion for mon­i­tor­ing PV plants — mak­ing us ide­al part­ners,” explains Jan Fis­ch­er, who is respon­si­ble for dig­i­tal projects at STEAG.

The spec­trum of dig­i­tal top­ics at STEAG ranges from soft­ware for plant mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol to an app-based plat­form for micro-invest­ments and soft­ware tools that enable effi­cient ener­gy man­age­ment and_{CO2 emis­sions bal­anc­ing}. “Our Stuttgart-based sub­sidiary OPTENDA, which spe­cial­izes in dig­i­ti­za­tion, excelled here in par­tic­u­lar,” says Jan Fischer.

Part­ner­ship lever­ages synergies
At the same time, STEAG is active with its sub­sidiary STEAG Solar Ener­gy Solu­tions GmbH — SENS for short — in the field of project devel­op­ment and plant con­struc­tion, espe­cial­ly for ground-mount­ed PV plants. With the soft­ware devel­oped by Solyt­ic espe­cial­ly for the opti­miza­tion of pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems, there are in this respect sev­er­al inter­sec­tions in terms of content.

The deci­sion to make the oper­a­tional tasks relat­ing to the tech­ni­cal man­age­ment of STEAG’s own pro­duc­tion plants for renew­able ener­gies even more effi­cient by means of intel­li­gent soft­ware solu­tions was there­fore con­sis­tent and log­i­cal. In addi­tion, STEAG’s involve­ment in Solyt­ic is intend­ed to make the fur­ther devel­op­ment and expan­sion of the Group’s renew­able gen­er­a­tion port­fo­lio even more sus­tain­able and economical.

Per­spec­tives Solytic
The coop­er­a­tion now con­clud­ed also offers great advan­tages for Solyt­ic. The start-up gains a strong part­ner who can accom­pa­ny the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the busi­ness with tech­ni­cal and ener­gy indus­try exper­tise: “The devel­op­ment of the decen­tral­ized ener­gy mar­ket con­tin­ues to accel­er­ate. The mar­ket now needs dig­i­tal solu­tions that can sus­tain­ably sup­port these changes. That’s why we want to focus even more on our core com­pe­tence in ener­gy data pro­cess­ing in the future, in order to active­ly help shape and pro­mote this change,” says Solyt­ic CEO Johannes Bur­gard, set­ting the direction.

Advan­tages of cooperation
Since STEAG is also dri­ving the dig­i­ti­za­tion of the ener­gy tran­si­tion and renew­able ener­gies with in-house devel­op­ments, the coop­er­a­tion was obvi­ous. In areas such as cloud solu­tions, Big Data-based analy­sis and con­trol tools, and appli­ca­tions in the field of AI and auto­mat­ed learn­ing, the part­ners intend to join forces from now on.

“By join­ing Solyt­ic, we are strength­en­ing our dig­i­tal com­pe­tence, cre­at­ing the best con­di­tions for addi­tion­al opti­miza­tion of our renew­able gen­er­a­tion port­fo­lio and rely­ing on fur­ther suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal solu­tions from our new part­ner,” says Dr. Ralf Schiele, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for Mar­ket and Tech­nol­o­gy at STEAG, explain­ing the rea­sons for the invest­ment decision.