German Commercial Waste Sorting Plant Successfully Tackles the Cost of its Energy-Intensive Operations with Solar

• Jan Heitmann GmbH cuts its traditionally high energy bills by 43%, saving approx. €47,000 a year
• Company also takes steps to improve the sustainability of waste disposal, reducing its carbon emissions by 112,746 kilos per year
• With hazardous and flammable materials handled on-site, SolarEdge’s DC-optimized inverter was key to securing safety approval of the rooftop system 

Hamburg, Germany – 16 July 2025 – Jan Heitmann GmbH, a leading German commercial waste sorting plant, has successfully tackled the high energy costs of its operations by turning to solar for self-consumption. With a 550kW rooftop solar system installed on its warehouse and machine halls, the investment in solar is also a significant step towards improving the sustainability of its waste disposal operations.

Headquartered in Elmshorn near Hamburg, the 100-year-old family-owned business Jan Heitmann GmbH specializes in turning waste into high-quality raw materials. The company has run highly energy-intensive operations for many years, using around 690,000 kwh of energy annually for the disposal of catering, construction and hazardous waste, as well as recycling construction rubble into minerals like sand, gravel and crushed stone. With annual energy bills as high as €110,000 and electricity prices continuing to rise, the management team at Jan Heitmann GmbH decided to invest in solar in a bid to take control of its energy bills and become more grid independent.

Powered by SolarEdge inverters and Power Optimizers, the rooftop solar system is now covering ~43% of the Jan Heitmann’s daily energy needs to power recycling and food waste disposal equipment – equating to approximately €47,000 a year in energy bill savings, while reducing the carbon emissions of its machine halls by 112,746 kilos annually. The company is now exploring the option of a commercial battery for energy storage to further maximize the economics of solar outside of daylight hours.

Jan Willhöft, Operations Manager at Jan Heitmann GmbH, says: “In the current economic climate, it is imperative for any business to be able to better control operational costs. The move to solar has not only enabled us to significantly reduce our inherently high energy bills, but also given our business increased resilience to ever-increasing grid electricity prices. These economic benefits show that improving the sustainability of our operations with clean energy can also save a lot of money.”

Advanced safety requirements key to securing project approval 
According to Hauke Heitshusen of PowerTrust – the solar specialist who installed the rooftop system – a critical requirement for Jan Heitmann GmbH was fire protection, given the hazardous and flammable nature of the materials handled on-site. As a result, technology choice was key.

“In order to meet Jan Heitmann’s stringent safety requirements, there are only few technologies that can automatically de-energize the entire solar system within seconds in the event of a fire,” explains Heitshusen. “This is why we chose SolarEdge’s DC-optimized inverter, with arc fault protection also key to detecting and interrupting potential arc faults in order to further mitigate risk. These advanced technological capabilities should not be underestimated – in fact, they were key to reassuring the client and securing approval for the project.”

SolarEdge’s innovative DC-optimized solution combines solar inverters with Power Optimizers (small devices attached to the underside of every pair of solar panels). Unlike traditional solar inverter technologies, the use of Power Optimizers ‘individualizes’ solar panels, meaning should any specific panel’s performance be affected by shading or soiling, the rest of the solar system continues operating at peak efficiency – a key factor in making the project financially viable for Jan Heitmann GmbH. Having visibility of individual solar panels also enables maintenance teams to monitor the system remotely and pin-point any specific issues at a panel-level, so that they can be resolved much faster – key to reducing operation and maintenance costs and increasing system uptime.