From simple, almost inconspicuous solar modules with a small, three-bladed wind turbine on the edge of an industrial site to futuristic wind turbines arranged in high arches above a petrol station: the small wind turbines - usually in combination with solar modules, battery storage and a charging station for electric vehicles - from Zug-based company FlowGen can be transformed in almost any way. Dirk Küster spared no effort when he founded FlowGen almost ten years ago. He originally comes from the motorsport sector and used to be a racing team manager at Porsche: “I was interested in applying my experience, my network and the technical possibilities from the automotive industry to the field of renewable technologies. The solar sector was already well developed at the time, but not wind power, Küster recalls. First of all, he and his team spent two years researching the market and its requirements and looking for suitable solutions - in Asia, Europe and the USA. “This showed that complete turnkey solutions for energy generation are primarily in demand. These should be able to be tailored for different purposes and be scalable to almost any size,” says Küster. The idea of developing systems that are operated close to the consumer and require little space matured. At the heart of this is a small wind turbine, which by definition is less than 50 meters high. The wind turbine is usually combined with solar power and a storage battery, but a diesel generator or a hydrogen-powered fuel cell can also be integrated if required.

For the wind turbines, FlowGen relies on SIMATIC S7-1200 controllers, which align the wind turbines with SINAMICS V20 frequency inverters. SINAMICS S120 frequency converters are used to store the energy generated by the wind turbines in the battery or feed it into the grid. Sentron energy measurement systems detect the currents for the micro-grid.