Mr. Pscherer himself gave us an overview how he set up his own business in 1990 as an entrepreneur. The idea was to pick up existing problems in different areas of the labour market and to provide trainings there where it is necessary. The Pscherer Bildungsinstitut is mainly funded by applying for all available funding and grants offered by the federal state of Saxony, Germany and any other Stakeholder. Nowadays Pscherer is a very well recognized institution with 58 employees and 80 freelance lecturers and its philosophy is to provide training and education, oriented on the markets concrete need (app. 30%), consultancy for newcomer and further education in existing SME (app. 50%) and development of new ideas and education concepts as well as giving support to regional development projects for the economy (app. 20%). At Pscherer people are going to be trained in specific sectors where professionals are demanded. This creates a win-win situation for both, the trainees as well as the businesses which are looking for competent employees.
Afterwards Mrs Doris Wildgruber informed us about the history of German laws and guidelines in the energy sector. We found out that (West-) Germanys movement towards energy efficiency and sustainability already started in 1976 due to the oil crisis to that time. The idea was to become more independent from oil. Up to now the improvement of those laws and regulations didn't stop. The situation in Germany today is having a well developed regulation which rules the feed-in of electricity into the grid (which is owned by the industry in Germany) from individuals who own renewable energy systems.
Additional to the renewable energy law (EEG) which rules detailed the use of renewable energies in Germany, there is also the Renewable Energies Heat Law which specifies and details heat installations. All these regulations and laws in Germany forced these who were involved in installation and maintenance of renewable energy systems to have a high level of knowledge and competence. The German government took advantage of that and increased the requested standards which installers of renewable energy systems have to have.
The third part of the day was a presentation given by a company representative of Windhager Austria, a company which manufactures and installs central heating systems. We especially focused on wood log and pellets central heating systems and could gain further knowledge about technical details and advantages of the use of wood pellet systems. The carbon neutrality of the use of pellets set up a discussion whether it is completely true considering the overall process energy involved in manufacturing the systems. A short demonstration of a wood pellet heating system in action had some starting problems, which we kind of predicted according to Sod's (Murphy's) law. The equipment needed about 20 minutes to start working ;-) but it did at the end produce a lovely flame burning up our lovely wood pellets...Back again at the Parkhotel we could share opinions and thoughts. Here a nice piture of the lovely countryside where we stayed:
Breakfast, biscuits, cake, tea & coffee, lunch, dinner, deserts during the day were also not too bad... best wishes, Stefanie
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