From grid interconnection to the global energy transition

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The roots of Rein­hausen GmbH date back to 1868. What began as a mechan­i­cal repair shop evolved into a machine fac­to­ry and even­tu­al­ly became a glob­al mar­ket leader in tech­ni­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed nich­es of elec­tri­cal pow­er engi­neer­ing. Today, under the MR brand, the com­pa­ny offers inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts and solu­tions to ensure pow­er flow, pow­er qual­i­ty, and the avail­abil­i­ty of crit­i­cal grid assets for man­u­fac­tur­ers, com­mis­sion­ing engi­neers, and oper­a­tors.

The com­pa­ny has been ded­i­cat­ed to elec­tri­cal pow­er engi­neer­ing since 1929. In doing so, the com­pa­ny – then oper­at­ing under the name Maschi­nen­fab­rik Rein­hausen Andreas Scheubeck – ben­e­fit­ed from close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the inven­tor Dr. Bern­hard Jansen. In 1925, he had writ­ten his dis­ser­ta­tion titled “On the Eco­nom­ic Effi­cien­cy of Inter­con­nec­tion Lines Between Large Pow­er Sup­ply Areas”.

In just over two years, he laid the tech­ni­cal foun­da­tions for today’s high-speed resis­tor-type tap-chang­er through four ground­break­ing patents. The seam­less inter­con­nec­tion of pow­er grids was a life­long pas­sion for the engi­neer, who lat­er became CEO of a region­al ener­gy util­i­ty. By the time of his untime­ly death in 1958, he had obtained a total of 157 inter­na­tion­al patents. At the same time, he orga­nized their imple­men­ta­tion by man­u­fac­tur­ers and oper­a­tors of pow­er trans­form­ers.

Progress always needs a pio­neer to get it rolling, but it also needs tra­di­tion to serve as a foun­da­tion. In an era of inter­con­nect­ed pow­er grids, Dr. Jansen knew how to estab­lish his inven­tions as tech­ni­cal stan­dards – despite the reser­va­tions of a con­ser­v­a­tive indus­try and com­pet­ing con­cepts. The basic prin­ci­ple described in his patents for the step­wise reg­u­la­tion of trans­form­ers under load remains indis­pens­able to this day for the safe and eco­nom­i­cal oper­a­tion of a pow­er sup­ply sys­tem orga­nized by volt­age lev­els. In addi­tion, he ensured that trans­former man­u­fac­tur­ers would be sup­plied by what is now Rein­hausen GmbH.

The cur­rent chal­lenges of the ener­gy tran­si­tion often raise sim­i­lar ques­tions to those posed 100 years ago. Fol­low­ing the glob­al push toward non-fos­sil and more decen­tral­ized ener­gy gen­er­a­tion, the focus is shift­ing toward stor­age and grid tech­nolo­gies. By 2050, glob­al elec­tric­i­ty demand is pro­ject­ed to grow by 80 per­cent, trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion grids are expect­ed to expand by 120 per­cent, and annu­al demand for trans­form­ers is fore­cast to increase by 200 per­cent.

In addi­tion to unplanned per­for­mance demands on the installed base (asset man­age­ment), there is the accel­er­at­ed expan­sion of infra­struc­ture (qual­i­ty and logis­tics) as well as the sup­port of entire­ly new appli­ca­tions (bat­tery ener­gy stor­age, data cen­ters). This calls for a solu­tion-ori­ent­ed com­bi­na­tion of mecha­tron­ics and pow­er elec­tron­ics, sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, as well as ana­lyt­ics and dig­i­tal­iza­tion – all work­ing in tan­dem with con­sult­ing, engi­neer­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, com­mis­sion­ing, and ser­vice.

It is pre­cise­ly in this com­pre­hen­sive sense that Rein­hausen GmbH’s heart beats at 60 loca­tions world­wide through its 6,000 skilled employ­ees. Dri­ven by our self-image as “The Pow­er behind Pow­er”, we are con­sis­tent­ly car­ry­ing for­ward into the future our appli­ca­tion- and inno­va­tionori­ent­ed approach – prac­ticed for near­ly 100 years – along with the high­est stan­dards of qual­i­ty and logis­tics per­for­mance.

The cir­cu­lar MR logo has long since ceased to rep­re­sent the his­tor­i­cal com­pa­ny abbre­vi­a­tion of a man­u­fac­tur­er of tap chang­ers (“Maschi­nen­fab­rik Rein­hausen”) and now stands for the for­ward-look­ing per­for­mance promise of a com­pre­hen­sive solu­tions provider (“Made by Rein­hausen”). In doing so, we remain the con­sis­tent­ly inde­pen­dent and reli­able part­ner to man­u­fac­tur­ers, com­mis­sion­ing engi­neers, and oper­a­tors of crit­i­cal grid infra­struc­ture. Togeth­er, we reg­u­late the all-elec­tric soci­ety.