Hamburg, Germany based residential solar system supplier and installer and a wholly owned subsidiary of energy utility EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, DZ-4 GmbH has a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Hans-Martin Rüter who was previously the founder and CEO of German renewable energy company Conergy AG.
Rüter has become DZ-4's CEO since January 2023. He was already the company's chairman of the advisory board between September 2018 to January 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. He founded RütInvest GmbH in 2007 as an equity investor in medium-sized companies in Europe, North America and Asia.
Rüter founded Conergy in 1998 as one of the earliest and most successful start-ups in the solar panel manufacturing space, later expanding its capabilities to development, financing, operations and maintenance (O&M) space for solar PV power plants.
Under Rüter's leadership, publicly listed Conergy attempted to grow big by expanding into other renewable technologies. However, the company filed for insolvency in 2013 after its efforts to expand via acquisitions at a time when the market was facing challenges with solar industry bottlenecks, backfired.
That's when the company's majority shareholder Dieter Ammer took over its reins, deciding to focus on the core business of solar energy. Later, barring its manufacturing unit at Frankfurt and some other business divisions, the brand was bought by Kawa Capital Management of the US.
Conergy Asia and its subsidiaries were then sold by Kawa to private equity funds Tennenbaum Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs who later divested stake in it to Macquarie Group's Green Investment Group (GIG). It was then rebranded as Blueleaf Energy to establish itself as a O&M specialist for solar power plants.
DZ-4 was launched in 2012 to offer solar and storage systems on rent to homeowners. It also offers planning, investment, installation, insurance, monitoring and maintenance of these rooftop systems. This business model is of late gaining traction in the market with DZ-4's German competitor Enpal having raised its market valuation to over €2.2 billion with a series of fund raising rounds (see Tesla Investor Bets On German Residential Solar Company).