Question 1: Mr. Trutschler, please provide a brief description of the meeco Group to the audience of Alternative Energy eMagazine. What are your main areas of business and your achievements so far?

 

Answer: The meeco Group was redirected to the energy sector following the years 2002 and has its headquarters in Zug, Switzerland. Currently the group has over 80 employees working across 4 continents. The Group annually generates well over € 250 million turnover for its clients. Our mission is to serve clients and partners by utilizing our network of experts to create clean energy solutions through sustainable business practices, providing at the same time attractive returns on investment. In the past, we have been mostly concentrating on large grid-connected photovoltaic plants. Since 2008 main parts of meeco’s research and development budget nevertheless has been redirected towards the off grid sector with small and portable as well as large island energy solutions being the focus.
 

 

Question 2: How are you working? What are the specialties of meeco?

 

Answer: We accomplish our mission by providing project developers, investors, system integrators and other businesses with the services necessary for timely delivery, financing, installation, as well as operation of clean energy project assets. With a structured but flexible approach based on our core competencies, meeco has delivered over 208MW of clean, renewable energy solutions across four continents.
 

 

Question 3: You have already mentioned your activities in the fields of grid-connected solar plants. Are there any new business areas, you will capture in the future?

 

Answer: Besides our global engagement in the off grid solutions sector, we have prepared ourselves for the tight solar market and are engaged in two highly important business areas, which are “clear” Advisory Services and “assets”.

 

With “clear” we provide our customers with our knowledge and our abilities to bring together the most important factors of success. By this, our customers can make use of our experiences, skills and contact within the renewable energy sector. We advise through clear at present industrial groups as well as large utilities or governmental agencies in their endeavors into the renewable energy sector.
 

Our brand “assets” aims to support our customers in the fields of Asset Management and the administration of Investments in renewable energy projects. Thus we provide investors and project owners a range of asset management services to ensure ongoing operational and financial success. Such services include: supervision of Operations & Maintenance, SPV administration, billing, accounting, tax filing up to electricity sales.

 

Furthermore we are preparing services and solutions for the following business areas: grid connected at grid parity level and obviously off-grid installations for commercial/industrial applications such as telecoms, water pumping and treatment, agriculture, building integrated aicronditioning and cold storage.
 

 

Question 4: What part of the world are you currently focused on for new projects and where do you see development growing in the near future?

Answer: Currently, we are focusing our business development efforts in the Middle East, Africa and the Latin America.
 

In the Middle East meeco has been present for a decade by now and we see that companies and governments there are starting to recognize the capacities of renewable energies as a substitute to burning oil, which these countries can instead sell on the market for a very high price. We therefore foresee the development and construction of large grid connected installations in this part of the well as well as some off grid solutions for remote areas or remotely placed applications.
 

The African and Latin American markets offer us today a huge engagement potential in the off grid sector as the usage of diesel generators to produce electricity becomes more and more expensive and at times difficult in remote areas. We believe, that our off-grid power generation and storage solutions, such as oursun and cellcube will have a superb chance at becoming highly demanded and leading technology within these markets.
 

Question 5: Is solar energy the primary area of development? How about wind energy?

 

Answer: Currently, we have been emphasizing PV for various operational and reliability reasons but in our off-grid sector we are working with wind turbines on a small scale. At the present, we are using turbines with a capacitiy with up to 30 kW.
 

 

Question 6: Are you seeing activity in the commercialization of utility scale Alternative Energy Storage solutions for the near term?

 

Answer: This is inevitable and basically every major player in the field has started to pour money and brains into the subject.
 

 

Question 7: What other viable clean energy solutions do you see developing over the next 10 years (other than solar and wind)?

 

Answer: We will continue to concentrate mainly on the solar branch but due to my mining background I do see some substantial potential in the usage of earth warmth and earth warmth power plants.
 

 

Question 8: If you could look into your crystal ball, what would you see in store for the clean energy industry over the next 20 years?

 

Answer: Well, I see energy consumption up by 40% and being generated from renewable energy sources as the price driver oil will move to prohibitive prices levels.



Mr. Dieter Trutschler, member of the Executive Board of meeco AG

• 45 years of age, married
• Dieter Trutschler started his first business when still at school in Germany with early days designing and programming of process software for exhaust purification systems in the energy industry and custom made PA system.
• He studied mining engineering and mathematics at the university of Aachen, Germany.
• During this time, Dieter Trutschler was a major and active shareholder in a company designing and selling software for financial and operations process management, inter alia to the hotel as well as the food and beverage industry.
• In 1994 he founded Tau, a company developing, engieering and implementing energy saving, waste reduction and water treatment solutions for paper mills in Germany and abroad together with a company owned by Ruhrkohle AG.
• Joined meeco (Switzerland) as a co shareholder in 2002 alongside a senior business partner. The core business of the company at that time was providing equipment and technical solutions to the beverage industry in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa. Dieter Trutschler redirected meeco’s business as per his specific background towards the energy and more in particular towards the renewable energy sector.
• Since 2004 meeco is actively and intensively engaged in the energy sector. As off late 2005/ early 2006 meeco became a strategic partner to the renewable energy endeavors of a+f GmbH, a member of the Gildemeister group, the world’s largest industrial machine tool manufacturer.

 

clear – Advisory Services
 

Our services focus on assisting our clients not only to develop and implement clean energy business strategies and governmental programs but also to create and finance bankable renewable energy projects. We work closely with our strategic partners to make sure every aspect of our clients’ needs are met.

 

 

The return on investment from solar energy projects is driven by four factors: optimum contract and financing structure; on-time and on-budget installation; efficient conversion of solar energy into electricity; reliability and durability of the installation.
 

We combine top-tier technologies and implementation services to create customized solutions. These solutions can be designed for either grid-connected or off-grid use to address the energy requirements of individuals, businesses, communities and utilities.

 

We provide investors and project owners a range of asset management services to ensure ongoing operational and financial success. Such services include: supervision of Operations & Maintenance, SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) administration, billing, accounting, tax filing up to electricity sales.

 

 

The meeco Group has become one of the world’s leading renewable energy companies by associating its competencies and local expertise with the best suppliers and contractors in the business.