Previous Page
Advisor of the Month Jens Langenbrinck
Evergy Engineering GmbH Malsenstrasse 84, 80638 Munich, Germany
At the close of 2013 the Husum project developer WKN AG, a company of the PNE WIND group, sold two wind farms - the Kastorf and Kropp projects - to the KGAL Group, one of the most successful asset managers for tangible assets. April’s Advisor of the Month, Jens Langenbrinck of Evergy Engineering, acted as Technical Advisor for the KGAL management team during this significant acquisition. We caught up with him for an insight into this deal and some of Evergy’s other projects.
J Q Q
ens Langenbrinck studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich with a specialization in aeronautical engineering and
space
technologies. Jens graduated as an engineer in 1992. Between 1994 and
2003, he was Managing Director of an engineering consultant specialized in renewable energies. At the end of 2003 he established Evergy Engineering GmbH.
What more can you tell us about Evergy?
Evergy specialises in Technical Consulting Services related to wind farms and PV projects in EU countries. Our main focus is on Technical Due Diligence. Furthermore, we provide advice on all technical questions arising throughout the operational phase of existing projects. Our team currently consists of 16 engineers. We have advised on more than 140 successful wind farm transactions with a total installed capacity of about 1,700 MW and more than 250 successful PV project transactions with a total installed capacity of about 1,900 MWp. The Partners and Managing Directors behind Evergy are Thorsten Nogge, Marc Böhnke and myself, each of them having about 20 years of experience in the wind energy sector and 10 years of experience in the PV sector. Evergy Engineering clients are internationally active project sponsors, financial investors and banks.
Can you tell us more about your involvement in KGAL’s acquisition
of the Kastorf and Kropp WKN wind farm projects?
In the Kastorf/Kropp transaction, Evergy has been acting as Technical Advisor for the KGAL management team. Our scope of work was to perform a full Technical Due Diligence on both wind farms Kropp
and Kastorf. The main subjects of our work were site conditions, permit requirements / curtailments, grid connection, turbine delivery contract, EPC contract, O&M services and energy production.
Q
What challenges did you face in this transaction and how did you overcome
them? ❝ Q
As commonly seen in year-end deals, the time schedule for the transaction process was very tight. First project documents have been delivered to us by end of October 2013. The entire transaction was signed and closed before Christmas. However, given that the project documentation was of very high quality and the ongoing Q/A-process was organised in a professional manner, this allowed us to complete the technical review in time.
Our fields of business have undergone significant changes in 2013 and further changes will happen in 2014
Can you tell us about some of your other recent, current or upcoming projects?
Our fields of business have undergone significant changes in 2013 and further changes will happen in 2014. Due to the recent changes in the German feed- in-tariff system for renewable energies we do not expect any new free-field PV projects in Germany to appear on our desks for the foreseeable future. The same applies to new PV projects in Italy and Spain.
On the other hand, we are currently working on a lot of new PV-projects in the UK and in France. Our wind energy sector has been constantly growing over the last few years with main focuses on Germany and France. Last but not least, we expect that a lot of existing wind farms and PV plants in the several EU countries will either need technical advice on operational issues and/or will be subject to a change in ownership or a refinancing which, depending on the demands of the transaction parties, will require technical consultancy services as well.
Q
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Our general view on the Wind and PV energy markets in the EU countries is that for most market participants it might be somewhat difficult to grow their business within the short-term future. However, on a mid-term view we are pretty optimistic. In particular if not looking on the EU countries, only, we are of the opinion that Wind and PV still have a huge potential with future growth rates even higher than in the past.
❝