ABOUT ERTE
AN ENGINEERING OFFICE THAT LISTENS TO YOUR PROJECTS
Specialized in engineering and installation of building techniques, we create solutions adapted to your needs. If your solution doesn’t exist yet, we invent it. We plan, calculate, coordinate and, above all, we implement and optimize your installations to achieve the best possible energy efficiency, while respecting the environment.
Our engineering office
ERTE Consulting Engineers Plc is an engineering office founded in 1984 by Georges Spoehrle, a heating, ventilation, air conditioning and solar engineer (HVCS). Recognized for its creativity and its competences in global and innovative energy concepts, the field of application of ERTE is wide.
For many years, ERTE has been putting its skills at the service of private individuals, local authorities and international organizations, particularly in the context of the construction of administrative, rental and hospital buildings, laboratories, apartments, villas and schools, but also in the context of renovation and refurbishment projects.
Thanks to our expertise, we accompany you in the success of your projects by providing quality work to guarantee your satisfaction. Our technical solutions ensure durability, reliability, simplicity and efficiency. We offer you peace of mind by ensuring that your equipment operates safely. We improve air quality and help you save money on your bills.
Our company’s experience provides you with proven, high-level technical expertise based on dynamic simulations comparing dual VCS technologies. Always at the cutting edge of technology, our work is made to last. You will find that we take our work seriously and value the trust placed in us.
Engineers at your service
Innovation and creativity, pillars of our services
Innovation is always more frightening for installers than for clients, and that’s why we decided to get involved: we became installation-engineers. After having worked in engineering for a long time, we decided to innovate and to specialize as installers as well. Since then, ERTE has become the company with the most solar thermal installations in Switzerland.
Research and development play an important role in our innovation process: solar panels, solar heat pumps, solar roofs, SUNERGIE®. The risks are calculated and controlled, which ensures a damage-free installation and no breakdowns. Being innovative, imaginative and creative clearly means that we take care of the details.
The environment at the heart of our projects
Our environment is a set of resources and assets to be protected and more and more of us are asking questions about the future of our planet. Today, more than ever, the energy design of a building must be based on economical, reliable and sustainable technologies that are respectful of human beings and the environment.
This philosophy behind all of ERTE’s services, which is why our installations offer great energy savings in the long term. We use adapted and free renewable energies (solar, Canadian wells…) and our Eco-Neighborhoods guarantee you savings on construction and energy costs thanks to multi-functionality and innovation. Choosing a product made to last is also choosing to respect our planet.
Our expertise
Feasibility study, preliminary project, final project, execution of works, maintenance, supervision of works. In close collaboration with the client and his architect, ERTE begins by determining a state of mind, then a global energy concept. These steps are essential to understand the expectations and challenges of a project. This is followed by the concrete and technical phase of dimensioning calculations, energy balance, cost estimates and profitability calculations. Simulations (dynamic calculations) with HELIOS, IGLOU, PVsyst, Lesosaï, Polysun… optimize the chosen solutions (fine tuning, thermal improvements and substitution of fossil energies). The execution, the implementation and the monitoring of the works concretize the studies. The control and monitoring of your installations are done remotely with your PC or smartphone wherever you are, thus saving energy and reducing costs.
Control of the results, optimization and fine-tuning of the installations, monitoring, maintenance, consulting and expertise of real estate. Once the work is completed, the installations are heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and lighting satisfactorily. However, at this stage, important parameters are still unknown, such as the real needs of the occupants and the behavior of the building and the appliances. The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is aware of the significant improvements that can be achieved by optimizations and recommends a period of observation of the buildings. The results lead to better performance, lower maintenance costs and increased comfort and durability of the installations. ERTE confirms this approach and was thus able to reduce the heating bill of an administrative building dating from the 1960s in Geneva by 50% without touching its envelope by acting solely on the heating installations.
As Glencore says in one of its ads:
“…People have changed, the world has changed, the planet has changed, trends have changed, we want to decarbonize our planet. Every industry must be completely rethought and reinvented…”
This slogan is not only true for the production of aluminum, electricityvore, but for any industry, any business, any activity that consumes energy and/or produces CO₂. Indeed, the whole of humanity is suffocating faster and faster, not only in those hundreds of millions of tons of waste, but also by eating foods full of heavy metals, pesticides, micro-plastics,…
No one, but really not one, would put his head in a transparent plastic bag and tighten it around his neck: death happens between 2 and 4 minutes.
But this is what we all do: the whole humanity, 8 billion people, is heading towards a collective and planetary suicide. This plastic bag is so perfect that no one can see or feel it. And those who want to get their head out of this CO₂ bag can’t: the “others” are forcing them to do so whether they want to or not. The worst part? This death is slow, invisible and totally painless unlike that of the head in the plastic bag.
ERTE doesn’t stand idly by, has never done so, since its creation on July 27, 1984.
We have never stopped innovating as shown by some beautiful and large references, but also in very small installations like villas (Villa Deom in 1987) and small immeubles… There has not been a single project where we have not been able to innovate, to bring a new element to reduce the energy impact on our small scale to the contribution of the planetary decarbonization.
During these 37 years of existence, we have been able to improve ourselves like our innovations and the SUNERGIE® system. This one is not a fixed, rigid, immutable system as the mainstream likes and has forced it for questions of efficiency and business, but rather as a philosophy that adapts to the place of the installations, also to the existing one when it comes to renovations, to make the most of it.
Being an engineer is a profession, not a role, as many of our colleagues have understood. ERTE is always trying to improve, to perfect, to innovate with its heating and hot water production systems, ventilation, air conditioning and of course with its numerous solar installations and Canadian wells.
This long and thankless work, full of pitfalls due to jealousy, sometimes even orchestrated by some collaborators of the State of Geneva itself and some of their allies of the time, one of which recently went bankrupt, was nevertheless able to be completed, as were the two largest solar thermal cities in Switzerland, in Plan-les-Ouates and Satigny, as well as the WMO (World Meteorological Organization). This fight against the establishment, which was disturbed by ERTE’s innovations, lasted for 20 years and ended with the completion of the WMO.
But the project which collects all the superlatives, is without any doubt the headquarters of the WMO which gathers all the innovation capacity of ERTE.