Driving electrification in 2024: Our year in review

It’s beginning to look a lot like year-end. For Schaltbau, it has been a year full of highlights and challenges, new products, new markets and plenty of awards. Before we set sight on 2025, let's take a look back on 2024 – the 95th year in which we have been in business.

Full focus on our purpose and vision 
Enabling society to unlock the full potential of electrification for a more sustainable future is a promise that continues to be rooted deeply in our business, as is our commitment and passion for safety on rail. Our vision is to be a global leader in DC technology – that’s why we have taken time to expand our footprint in the fast-growing e-mobility and energy markets. By launching Eddicy in spring 2024, together with our updated Schaltbau branding, we underscore our ambition to provide our energy and e-mobility customers with solutions that make their products safer and more efficient. 

Read more about our vision, mission, values and the launch of Eddicy here. 

And the winner is … Schaltbau’s NExT Factory 

Advancing our portfolio of solutions and innovations is both demanding and challenging at times. Our NExT Factory in Velden, Germany, however is living – concrete – proof that grit pays off: During its first full year of operation, the CO-neutral factory literally took the limelight by winning numerous industry awards, including the German Energy Agency’s “Energy Efficiency Award 2024”, the “German Award for Sustainability Projects”, and the “German Innovation Award.” 

The world’s first DC factory saves up to 35% in annual energy costs by its direct current microgrid, intelligent energy management as well as battery and thermal storage. Our hope for it to become a blueprint for others by setting a new standard in industrial energy efficiency and demonstrating scalable strategies for reducing CO₂ emissions was certainly nourished by these awards as well as by the hundreds of visitors from across the industry and world which flocked to the factory this year. 

Learn more about the NExT Factory here. 

Fast-tracking bidirectional DC applications 

Safely charging and discharging direct current is a prerequisite for many of the energy and e-mobility applications paving the way towards climate-neutrality. Not only do they need to fulfil the highest safety, performance and reliability standards, they also need to withstand the most demanding environments. In 2024, we introduced the first addition to our Eddicy portfolio of products for energy and e-mobility: our fully bidirectional C303 industrial DC contactor series. Engineered for high inrush currents, C303 contactors have a making capacity of 2,000 amps, continuously carry up to 350 amps, and withstand short-circuit currents of up to 4,000 amps for 20 milliseconds. 

Despite being the smallest in its product family, it delivers unmatched performance in industrial DC applications, such as stationary charging infrastructures, energy storage, battery test benches, DC microgrids, non-IATF electric vehicles, vehicle-2-grid and intralogistics. 

Discover more about our C303 here.

Meeting our customers and partners 

From trade fairs in Korea, USA, UK and France where we first presented Eddicy to customers, to Hannover Messe, the Battery Show Europe and ees Europe: Schaltbau spent a fair bit of time on the road to introduce our new products and gather customer feedback. One trade fair that we will particularly remember: the 2024 InnoTrans in Berlin, the world’s largest trade fair for transport technology. With 2940 exhibitors and 170,000 (!) visitors from 133 countries, it was an excellent opportunity to meet with customers, partners, politicians to showcase our expanded high-power contactors (CP and CF series) for high-demand rail applications. Those bustling days in Berlin, if anything, showed the tremendous momentum for reducing emissions, improving energy efficiency, and driving the digital transformation of transportation. 

The future (device) is smart 

Schaltbau will also look back to 2024 as the year in which we first introduced smart devices – namely, the Smart Circuit Breaker, an intelligent switching device for critical energy applications. Equipped with integrated sensors, real-time monitoring, and self-diagnostic capabilities, it cuts off short-circuit currents ten to a hundred times faster than conventional contactors, detects overcurrents early, measures and assesses fault currents and collects critical data points. Consequently, it improves energy management and can help to significantly minimize downtime. 

Read the announcement of our Smart Circuit Breaker here.

Our wish for 2025 

A sustainable future is an electrified one – and direct current can make a significant contribution towards net zero by eliminating major inefficiencies. Sourcing more energy from renewable sources is critical, along with the need to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy waste in all sectors. The more we can avoid or reduce costly conversion losses between DC and AC in the industrial, energy and mobility sectors, the better. We are as eager as ever to contribute to the energy and e-mobility DC infrastructure of the future and remain committed, as always, to the safety on rail.