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Today's university was founded in 1775 on the initiative of Henning Calvör as a mining and metallurgy school and was converted into a mining academy in 1864. Due to the increasing use of machines in mining, it was necessary to expand the very practical focus of the education to include the theoretical foundations of electrical engineering.
In 1962, Prof. Karlheinz Bretthauer, a proven expert in the field of electrical engineering, was appointed to the newly created chair of "Electrical Engineering" at the Clausthal Mining Academy. As he had obviously taken a liking to the Bergakademie environment, he followed the call with great commitment and reorganized the lectures and practical courses, created a workable institute structure and planned the construction of a new institute building with a hall wing. In 1971, the time had come. The institute was able to move into the new building and hall.
When the Bergakademie was restructured into a technical university due to the increasing number of students and the introduction of new degree courses (including chemistry, physics and mechanical engineering), it became clear that his reorganization of teaching was solid and future-oriented.
Despite his retirement in the mid-1980s, Prof. Bretthauer continued to hold his lectures until 1989, when his successor Prof. Beck took over the renamed Chair of "Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and Electrical Power Engineering" and the management of the institute.
In the course of the transition of the institute's management, the focus of teaching and research shifted towards control engineering. A particular concern of the new professor was to combine the general electrical engineering course with the increasingly important field of power engineering. This gave rise to the Energy Systems Engineering degree course in 1994, which today has more and more advocates in research and industry and is only taught at a few locations in Germany.
After 33 years of service, Prof. Beck handed over his position as head of the institute to the newly appointed university professor Ines Hauer on 01.09.2022. With this handover, the chair of the institute was renamed "Energy Storage Technology".
Then as now, the focus of teaching and research was on decentralized energy systems, power mechatronics/drives and electrical energy storage systems.
Whereas the institute used to focus mainly on conventional energies, research into the integration of renewable energies in all sectors now predominates; further research focuses on energy storage and drive systems.