Institute for Energy

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Part of the former main building (2019)

The Institute for Energy ( IfE ) was the scientific and technical center of the energy industry in the GDR for the processing of fundamental scientific problems of the production, distribution and delivery of electrical energy, gas and heat. It existed from 1953 to 1990. Its seat was Leipzig .

history

After the end of the Second World War , the main focus in the Soviet occupation zone and the young GDR was on securing the energy supply for the population and the economy in spite of outdated power plants and reparations to the USSR . Repairs and elimination of bottlenecks were in the foreground. Modernizations and expansions only began in the 1950s. Associated research work was carried out in facilities that were partly located in companies or affiliated with the administrations of the energy districts. Centralization was necessary to secure larger projects.

By order of the State Secretariat for Coal and Energy of February 24, 1953, the Institute for Energy was founded in Halle / Saale with retroactive effect to January 1, 1953. The institute was made up of the Technical and Scientific Center of the Dresden Energy Company, the Institute for Thermal Engineering and Gas Measurement in Dessau , the Energy Consumption Standards Department of the Markkleeberg Energy School and the laboratories of the large gas works in Magdeburg and Markkleeberg. The spatial separation had considerable disadvantages.

Therefore, in 1955 it was decided to bring the institute together in a new building in the most central location possible. The choice fell on Leipzig, namely on part of the site of the former armaments plant HASAG in the east of the city. In 1955 the first groundbreaking took place on Torgauer Straße next to the area of ​​the institutes of the Academy of Sciences (today Leipzig Science Park ). The foundation stone was laid in July 1956, and the institute moved in in April 1958. The first building complex consisted of an office and a laboratory wing, and major expansions followed later.

With the new premises, previously unavailable technical possibilities, such as the high-voltage test field and the analog network model, could be used for investigations in the field of electrical energy transmission .

From the beginning of the 1960s, the use of electronic computing technology became essential for the institute to carry out its tasks. That is why in 1963 the ZRA 1 automatic computer developed by VEB Carl Zeiss in Jena was put into operation in the computer center department of the institute founded in October 1962. In 1969 the installation of the then ultra-modern Soviet large-scale computer system BESM 6 led to a significant acceleration of many research projects. When it went into operation, the data center department was upgraded to a management area. In 1983 the BESM 6 was replaced by the EC 1055 system from ESER II technology from the Robotron combine . Another focus from 1985 onwards was the use of decentralized computing technology and CAD / CAM solutions.

In the course of the increase in the importance of the rational use of energy in all areas of the economy, the Central Office for the Rational Use of Energy was founded in 1971 from parts of the IfE and the VVB Energieversorgung and the name of the institute was expanded to Institute for Energy / Central Office for Rational Energy Use (IfE / ZRE) .

The Institute for Energy was subordinate to various central state bodies: first the Ministry for Heavy Industry, then the Ministry for Coal and Energy , from 1961 to 1965 the Economics Council and then the Ministry for Basic Industry and from 1971 finally again to the newly established Ministry for Coal and Energy (MKE).

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 rose for the near Greifswald operated nuclear power plant north and the yet to be built nuclear power plant Stendal the requirements for nuclear safety considerably. With this in mind, the IfE was incorporated into the “Bruno Leuschner” Greifswald nuclear power plant combine on January 1, 1987, and commissioned with further issues relating to nuclear safety.

After the fall of the Wall , the Greifswald nuclear power plant was shut down in the summer of 1990 due to fundamental safety deficiencies (lack of containment). With this and with the restructuring of the energy industry in the GDR, the IfE had lost a large part of its work areas.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the institute took the form of a non-profit GmbH with the name Institute for Energy and Environment and dealt primarily with the use of renewable energies on a smaller scale. At the end of the 1990s, a BIP creativity school was set up in part of the institute building .

After the German Biomass Research Center was founded in Berlin on February 28, 2008 , the Institute for Energy and Environment non-profit GmbH bought it on March 17, 2008, including the entire property. The two companies merged on June 17, 2008.

tasks

The work directions and tasks of the IfE, which were fixed from 1953 to the 1980s, initially included

  • the scientific processing of technological and economic problems in the energy industry including the preliminary examination of inventions and suggestions for improvement as well as the preparation of expert reports,
  • the processing of questions of energy management planning with the aim of a rational energy conversion and use
  • the elaboration of energy consumption standards
  • the evaluation and processing of literature in the field of the energy industry as well as the issuing of own publications
  • Rationalization of production preparation and implementation through the use of computer technology
  • Energy application research,
  • selected areas of electrical power generation,
  • Development of processes to keep the air clean
  • Ergonomic research to increase the ability of operating personnel in NPPs to act

With the rapid development of the energy industry in the 1960s, further important tasks arose

  • Elaboration of proposals for the overall development of the energy economy, taking into account the rational use of energy
  • Development of software for planning and operational management of electrical energy systems of all voltage levels and gas supply networks of all pressure levels.
  • Measures for the optimal design and control of the electrical energy network and the gas network
  • Rationalization tasks for energy systems
  • Questions of environmental protection, in particular flue gas desulphurisation and the purification of certain waste water

Further tasks of the IfE in the 1970s were:

  • Development of prototype cases for microelectronics, especially microprocessor technology, in order to use them in the production and distribution processes of the coal and energy industries.
  • Rationalization of management and planning in coal and energy companies, on the use of computer technology to rationalize production preparation and implementation, on energy application research, on selected areas of electrical power generation, on keeping the air clean and on the field of ergonomics.

The main fields of research at the IfE in the 1980s include the following:

  • long-term planning of the energy industry
  • Implementation of the rational use of energy in all areas of the economy
  • Automated information processing for planning and managing the entire system of the energy industry
  • Use of microtechnical solutions in the processes of coal mining, gas generation and in power plants
  • Software development for production preparation in mining (geologist workstation, data storage "lignite exploration", geofiltration and migration, cavern brining)
  • Development work on flue gas desulfurization, introduction of the limestone additive process
  • Development and introduction of scientific solutions in steam and water cycles in power plants
  • Development of a power station trainer for 440 MW units

To solve its tasks, the institute maintained relationships with universities and technical colleges, with institutes of the Academy of Sciences, with institutes of the Building Academy and with the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. It was also represented in numerous international bodies.

Awards

Employees of the institute were involved in collectives that won the National Prize of the GDR III. Received class for science and technology.

  • 1968 Peter Hedrich in the collective "Mathematical modeling to optimize the prognostic development of the energy industry in the GDR"
  • 1974 Hans-Joachim Gasse and Günther Weise in the collective "Process rationalization in the energy industry through IT applications"
  • 1984 Bernhard Kahn, Wolfgang Kluge, Gerhardt Manig and Rudolf Ungethüm in a collective from the Institute for Energy Leipzig and the VEB Kraftwerk Elbe, Vockerode, for the "development of a highly effective process for flue gas desulphurisation ".

literature

  • Institute for Energy (Ed.): 35 years Institute for Energy 1953–1988 . Edited by Johannes Steiner, Leipzig 1989
  • Ulrich Krüger: Catching Acid Rain - Fifty Years of the Institute for Energy and Environment. In: Leipziger Blätter Heft 43, 2003, pp. 90/91

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of the BIP schools. Retrieved May 30, 2019 . BIP stands for education, intelligence, personality.
  2. ↑ The DBFZ. In: web archive. Retrieved May 30, 2019 .
  3. ↑ 35 years of the Institute for Energy 1953–1988
  4. ↑ according to the entries in the lists of the winners of the National Prize of the GDR III. Science and Technology Class for 1960–1969 , 1970–1979, and 1980–1989

Coordinates: 51 ° 21 '19.4 "  N , 12 ° 26' 5.6"  E