KOSTAL Solar Electric – generating and using energy smartly

As a provider of solutions for smart power generation and usage, we work closely with various partners, including those from the Smart Home sector, but also with our customers to enable you to source environmentally friendly, clean energy from your own roof. We develop and produce our innovative solutions for the energy of the future in Germany so we can offer our customers the very highest quality standards. We benefit from the experience that the KOSTAL Group has gathered from supplying the automotive trade for over 100 years.

True to our "Smart connections." brand promise, which is based on a real spirit of partnership, we support you along the way and provide comprehensive information; see, for example, our service area FAQs, designed to make our inverters easier to install, operate and use. Free product training sessions at various locations in Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, France and Turkey improve your specialist knowledge of how to install and set up our products.

Having been a family-owned company for over 100 years is of particular significance to KOSTAL: everything the company and our staff do is based on shared values, a strong connection and loyalty between the company, the Kostal family and the employees, and always with a focus on long-term, sustainable activities.

For the KOSTAL Group, these activities cover the development of high-quality electronic, electromechanical and mechatronic solutions for a wide range of automotive and industrial applications. Thanks to these innovative solutions, finely honed expertise in both development and technology and lasting, reliable quality, KOSTAL is a partner you can count on.

The company is split into four business divisions: Automotive Electrical Systems, Industrial Electronics, Connectors and SOMA (Test Technology), which together achieve a turnover of €2.5 billion. Founded in 1912 by Leopold Kostal in Lüdenscheid, Germany, the Group has grown continuously and today employs around 18,000 members of staff at 46 sites spread across 21 countries on four continents.

Through all its business divisions, KOSTAL works to shape the future right here and now, to be a stable and secure business you can continue to rely on for many years to come.

The KOSTAL Group’s partners include the world’s leading automotive manufacturers and numerous major industrial companies.

Thanks to the strong, close partnerships we've been able to build over the years with you, our customers, suppliers and service providers, 2016 saw us celebrate our 10th birthday.

We took this as an opportunity to host a range of joint activities during our anniversary year of 2016; on the one hand, this was to make our brand come alive for all our partners, but on the other, it was also to say a huge thank you for the 10 years we've spent together. Join us as we take a trip down memory lane!

Creating partnerships: our "Connect" videos

Emphasising and maintaining the connection we have with you and our partners is not only part of our corporate philosophy, it's also a matter close to the heart of each and every one of our employees. We're delighted to look back on the many smart connections that we and our partners have made with one another over the years. For our flagship project – the "Connect" videos – we asked you to send us a short message about what "connecting" means to you.

We're delighted that so many of you decided to make a video. We would like to thank you very much for all the well wishes we've received.

You can see for yourself just how varied and creative those congratulatory messages were on our YouTube channel. We hope you like these unique videos just as much as we do.

€25,000 anniversary donation for a KOSTAL Solar Village in Uganda

The KOSTAL Group has long taken its corporate social responsibilities seriously, so we couldn't let the anniversary year pass without some kind of charity campaign. That's why, for every PIKO inverter order we received in 2016, we donated €10 to the Stiftung Solarenergie (Solar Energy Foundation).

We even decided to forgo a big anniversary celebration, instead marking our birthday on 19 December 2016 by handing over the proceeds of our fundraising campaign to the Solar Energy Foundation. An incredible €25,000 was raised. ,

Delighted with the outcome, Dr Harald Schützeichel, Director of the Solar Energy Foundation, said: "This sum will enable us to achieve so much more through our solar projects in East Africa than we originally thought possible and to really transform people's lives there for the better". 

Since the donation was more than enough to connect the Ugandan village of Kasozi up and enable it to harness the power of the sun by the end of January, we decided to use the leftover funds to electrify the 'KOSTAL Solar Village“, located in the Jinja region.

This extra project laid the foundation for further development in the village and is making life so much easier for the residents. Thanks to your support, medical care in Jinja has been fundamentally improved, women have been able to access education through evening classes and jobs have been created, e.g. for overseeing the energy supply in the village.

Want to find out more about our fundraising campaign? You can read on here.

Music connects: "Smart connections." song is re-recorded to mark our anniversary

For our anniversary, we've not only created something new, but have continued to develop our tried-and-tested products. This also applies to our well-known brand song "Smart connections." We still believe music has the power to connect people, so it was only right and proper that it was included in our 10th birthday celebrations.

We recorded a special version of our song to mark the occasion. Just like the original version from 2011, this one too had its debut performance at our traditional "Smart connections." party at Intersolar Europe in Munich, but this year it was performed as a duet by singer Vanessa Ekpenyong and her partner Tommy Reeve.

One customer had a special interpretation of our "Connecting for 10 Years" motto, giving us a live rap performance on stage, which then featured a spontaneous musical accompaniment from our band.

You can see the lyrics for yourself here, so you will have no excuse not to sing along loud and clear in future!

Capturing connections in photos

We also used the anniversary year as an opportunity to show just how important our partnerships are to us and to say a very special thank you to those partners who have been with us over the past 10 years. We wanted to give a little gift that not only embodied what we think and feel about our "Connecting for 10 Years" anniversary motto, but that also created a lasting memory. That's why we got you involved: In early 2016, we sent out a newsletter asking for your input on what the word "connect" means to you. The response was great and it became clear that we have very creative partners.

Equipped with these ideas and visions, we sent our photographer out to capture these word associations in pictures. We ended up with some fantastic photos,

 

adding words to create striking connections. The combinations of image and text are designed to make you smile, reflect or even dream.

This high-quality coffee-table book contains over 30 images that illustrate different connections found in different areas of life. We hope everyone who gave us their input will recognise themselves in the images and accompanying text and will enjoy leafing through the book. The process of developing and designing this unique gift has brought us great joy and we're looking forward to presenting it to you.

Take a look inside our "Connect" book.