Many were surprised to see that we continued after the Bulgarian authorities broke down the support system for renewable electricity. While project investors in solar PV and wind energy left the country, we focused on clean energy applications that do have many benefits, including financial ones, even without or with little subsidies or feed-in tariffs. We believe there are investment opportunities for clean energy which are beneficial, certainly in using local resources, and by providing better sustainability, also in economic terms, even in an economy as the one of Bulgaria.
What products are you presenting on EE & RE? Which companies do you represent on our market?
Next to our development and financial engineering activities (and we do not mind providing some advisory services too), we represent two Dutch companies, that produce renewable energy products.
One company is Kara Energy Systems, a producer since 50 years of industrial biomass boilers in the range of 500 kilowatt to 15 Megawatt.
Kara is present for the third time in a row at the Via Expo fair. Kara is a worldwide supplier of complete combustion systems for wood and other types of biomass including straw. Kara is delivering turn key and custom made products, with high durability and high efficiency. Kara is actually active in Bulgaria since the early 1990s.
Further, we are proud to introduce to Bulgaria another leader in its field, Spaans Babcock. Spaans Babcock is providing screw technology since 125 years. Initially, the screws were used to pump large volumes of water. For example, the Dutch lake on which Amsterdam airport was built, was dried with the help of Spaans’ screw pumps. More recently, the technology is used to deliver power using the screws in a reverse way, for low-head hydropower applications.
One of the advantages of this run-off river technology is that this is reducing environmental impacts in and around the production locations, compared to other types of hydropower. This is important to us, as we do not want to create new environmental issues by trying to solve the one to reduce CO2 emissions. We are also very eager to be involved in the development stages of hydropower (and other renewable energy) projects, having years of experience on that part.
Considering the Balkans, screw turbines are well suited for a good number of locations. Project sizes ranges typically from 20 kilowatt to 2 Megawatt. At the moment of this interview, the first Spaans Babcock product in Bulgaria is being installed and will be operational around the Via Expo fair.
In which areas is Djadadji developing, what is the application of you products/ services?
In our effort to offer and promote clean energy we are striving for solutions which are environmentally friendly and at the same time do not compromise on high performance, quality and return on investment. We are for example very interested to collaborate with ESCOs and utilities, which would like to change from their fossil fuelled boilers to biomass boilers. We also work with resource providers in the Balkan region, which can supply biomass resources under long term contracts.
Next to the hydropower installation being delivered around this time, Kara is also delivering a 2,4 Megawatt straw fired steam boiler for an agri-industrial client in Bulgaria. We can also provide cogeneration solutions for companies that both need heat (or steam) and electricity for their production. Obviously, the Kara installations fulfil local emission requirements with state of the art emissions filtering systems.
We are also continuing some of our asset management activities taking full care of building integrated solar energy systems as well as energy efficiency installations for a large public building in Sofia, which is leading to dramatic reductions of energy consumption for the respective building operators.
Who are your clients? Whom are you expecting at your stand at the exhibition EE & RE 2017?
Our clients are industrial clients, from the agricultural or the wood processing sector and project investors. We are looking forward to collaborating with local and international utilities and always enjoy it when there are similar strategic goals as ours . For example, when it comes to clean energy, energy transition and making use of locally available energy resources of clean energy.
Further, we are developing with partners IoT (Internet of Things) solutions to further improve access to the green energy installations we deliver and/or operate. Next to improving the level of information on the performance of installations, we also provide access in order to control, either on the spot or remotely, the installations. One of the reasons for this, is that we want to keep performances on a high level during the lifetime of the installations, keep installations in technical shape. We see that international investors are also ‘pushing’ for such solutions, to be able to get better insight in the performance of ‘their’ investments.
Djadadji is already present on the Bulgarian market for more than 10 years; would you like to tell us more about the company?
