In conversation with eno energy head of sales Patrick Rudolf

The wind energy industry is more strongly diversified and widely discussed than almost any other sector. This is where the pioneering spirit of enthusiastic individualists who take huge risks and make personal sacrifices to bring about real change meets large-scale industrial structures, interests and challenges against a backdrop of basic socio-political and economic needs, such as security of supply, competitiveness and affordable electricity.

Operating in this demanding arena, eno energy has built a strong reputation and established itself as an industry all-rounder. No other company plays such a relevant role in so many different areas or can offer its customers such a broad range of services. Despite the eno energy group being well known in the industry, it seems that few people really fully understand the business. While it is successfully involved in almost all product and service areas relating to the wind industry, it cannot be conveniently pigeonholed as a developer, wind turbine manufacturer, service provider or development service provider, making it very difficult to put a label on. The best way of describing eno energy is as an agile technology company that has the wide-ranging capability to offer comprehensive, largely independent solutions in the renewable energy sector.

The broad service portfolio is no accident, but nor was it the founder’s original intention to make the company so broad-based and multi-faceted. Rather, it reflects the evolution from project development firm to an infrastructure development company that operates its own portfolio of wind turbines. Unlike with the common pattern of growth by way of monostructures and specialisation, the owner-managed eno energy group chose early on to minimise risk through diversification and to pursue long-term goals.

As a logical consequence of this approach, the eno energy group has deliberately not pursued disproportionate growth in any of its business areas. It has therefore not become one of the big, well-known players with large production numbers, prestigious deals and correspondingly extensive media coverage, both good and bad. The eno energy group has always had a strategy of measured growth, achieving this in recent years primarily through striking a balance between project implementation and parallel development of the company’s own wind turbine portfolio.

The current WTG portfolio – we recently commenced construction of prototype installations for our eno140, eno152 and eno160 WTG types – allows eno energy to make its wind turbines consistently available in the market. In contrast to traditional series manufacturers, our focus is not on mass production scaling of our products. The priority is to achieve organic growth through customers with single-digit annual turbine requirements.

With a design geared to longevity, maximum ease of servicing and high component quality, a mainly German/European supply chain and production based solely in Germany (Rostock), we intentionally choose not to follow the market’s usual migration of production to “best-cost” countries or to engage in over-scaling (i.e. deliberately pushing engineering design limits), because our product, our reputation and our promises to our customers are simply too important. A satisfied customer and a wind turbine that consistently delivers energy are more important to us than generating deals at any price and defining ourselves in terms of quantity.

I was asked just recently for my personal thoughts on the wind turbine manufacturer market and the challenges facing eno energy in this respect. In general, I don’t see eno energy as being in direct competition with the market-leading wind turbine manufacturers because our market positioning scarcely overlaps with the sales targets of other OEMs. On the contrary, I regard eno energy’s positioning in the low-volume premium segment as significantly more robust than serving the high-volume mass production market. Like other industry sectors before it, the European wind industry is now seeing the arrival of Chinese mass manufacturers and is faced with aggressive price policies, short lead times and huge production capacity. European mass manufacturers are expected to streamline their product ranges due to further cost-cutting in response, which will open up additional sales potential for eno energy in the future and boost demand for its wind turbines.