STEAG joins Solytic

Essen/Berlin. STEAG is strengthening its competencies in the areas of digitalization and renewables, with the Essen-based energy company becoming a shareholder in Solytic GmbH. The Berlin-based start-up supplies cloud-based, manufacturer and hardware-independent monitoring software for photovoltaic systems. With this software solution, the performance of PV plants can be monitored and their economic efficiency increased. As the STEAG Group’s commitment to the field of photovoltaics has been steadily growing for several years, STEAG and Solytic have now decided to join forces for their mutual benefit.

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

The range of digital topics at STEAG extends 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 accounting. “Our Stuttgart-based subsidiary OPTENDA, which specializes in digitalization, has particularly excelled here,” says Jan Fischer.

Partnership leverages synergies
At the same time, STEAG is involved through 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 specially for the optimization of photovoltaic plants, there are therefore several substantive overlaps.

The decision to make the operational tasks relating to the technical management of STEAG’s own production facilities for energy from renewables even more efficient by means of intelligent software was therefore a consistent and logical one. In addition, with its investment in Solytic, STEAG intends to make the further development and expansion of the Group’s renewable generation portfolio even more sustainable and economical.  

Prospects for Solytic
The cooperation now agreed offers major advantages to Solytic. The company gains a strong partner who can support the further development of the business with technical and energy industry expertise. “The development of the distributed energy market continues to accelerate. The market now needs digital solutions that sustainably support these changes. That’s why we want to focus even more on our core competence in energy data processing in the future, to actively shape and promote this change,” says Solytic CEO Johannes Burgard, outlining the direction to be taken.

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

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