Early planning for the yearly excursion started as usual at the beginning of the winter semester 19/20. With much enthusiasm, the students started to contact companies and institutes in the field of renewable energy all over Germany, with a goal to get insights and hands on the industry and the current research taking place. The plan was according to the PPRE tradition: to go in 10 days journey, get to know each other more and bond, discover new horizons, inspirations and of course do a hiking trip.
However, Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety regulations made it challenging for the company visits during the scheduled period in July. The companies were contacted readily to reschedule the excursion visits at the suitable time. But unfortunately, the pandemic crisis made the situation difficult for the industry. Consequently, companies were not able to give certain appointments close to the pre-planned schedule. Moreover, the new travel restriction made it uncertain for the students, who were traveling outside of Germany during semester break, about their return on due time for the excursion. All these challenges forced PPRE planning teams to shift the excursion from July 2020 to March 2021.
The decision on postponing the excursion was done in a way that each group of the different organizing teams held a teleconference to gather votes from each member in their group, on choosing the shifting date options and its consequences. Then after an intense discussion with program instructors, the decision was made to move the date to March 2021 according to the votes and other COVID-19 safety precautions. 
All previous appointments for visiting companies were cancelled and new appointments were requested. All reservations for buses and hostels needed to be rescheduled too. As it was not clear how the COVID-19 pandemic situation was going to develop, it was rather difficult to get new appointments with companies, busses and hostels.
Eventually, the team successfully managed to get new appointments with the companies and reservations with the buses and hostels at later times.