Bringing safety & innovation to green industries of tomorrow

Michael Leuchte, CSO & CTO, Schaltbau GmbH discussed the company's latest product offerings for new energy, e-mobility and energy storage systems, expansion into new markets, and product innovations underway at the company. 

Schaltbau has been a leading manufacturer providing electromechanical components for e-mobility, EV charging infra, energy storage, and renewable energy. Please elaborate on your products offerings and the various applications in which they are used?

Schaltbau has experience of over 90 years in developing and supplying electromechanical components such as DC-contactors, disconnectors, snap action switches, connectors, and other products which are specific for DC rail applications. These products have applications such as main, charging, and aux. contactors for EVs, charging and discharging contactors for battery or hydrogen fuel cell-based energy storage systems, battery chargers, solar inverters, and industry.

We see green technologies, basically all related to DC currents, as a key to building up 'zero-carbon footprint of our society. Climate change forces all governments and industries to rethink their infrastructure using green technologies.

Schaltbau has a global footprint, tell us about the global markets you supply your new energy and EV and charging infra products at present. What are some markets you plan to foray into in the upcoming months?

Yes, Schaltbau has a global footprint. We have good clientele in Germany, Austria, UK, France, Russia, Americas, China, Asia Pacific, and India. Being well settled in these geographies, we want to enhance our reach in these markets with a special focus on North America and India.

We provide components and sub-solutions to ensure safety and reliability for green technologies.

Where is the manufacturing base set-up for these products and what is the production capacity for each of these?

We have production facilities in Germany, UK, China, and India for these products.

We are investing in the state-of-the-art new facility in Velden, Germany which shall be operational by Q1/ 2023. This facility is designed with automation as per Industry 4.0, shall have IATF certification, and shall manufacture a variety of contractors with a capacity of several million DC-contactors per year. With that investment, we want to show that a fully integrated concept of solar, energy storage, and a DC Grid allow at the end a 'zero-carbon production.

The design of the high bay storage is realized in a way, that the kinetic energy of the hoists is kept in the system by reusing the energy from recuperation. So, we can reduce the external energy supplied from the DC Grid by more than 70 percent.

Using a fully integrated approach of all existing technologies we expect a payback time of around four years, which makes green technologies interesting for the industry.

What is the USP of Schaltbau's DC contactors and switchgear?

Schaltbau has expertise in DC switching. Our slogan is 'DC under control' as DC switching is a safety-related functionality.

We provide not only products and solutions but also consultancy to our clients for their DC needs. Our DC technology is appreciated by our competitors as well - they use our contactors for their DC needs!

Our latest products are designed keeping in mind the requirements of applications and climate change - such as low power consumption, low-temperature rise, compact size, and safety. As you would be aware that the current applications such as electric vehicles, ESS, etc. need such products. Schaltbau´s strengths are in the field of high currents, between 150A and 2000A.

A widely used modular approach allows us to define customer-specific solutions quickly, transferring them to mass production if necessary. These are our patented technologies, which are well accepted by leading clients in the automobile industry.