Solar panels connected to 7 wastewater treatment plants
The project to connect seven small solar parks to the wastewater treatment plants was completed today. Executive board member Herman Beerda and sustainability advisor Tjitse Mollema symbolically commissioned the solar parks. They did so at the plant in Eelde, where the first solar panel was installed last year.
Small-scale solar parks were built on a total of seven sites belonging to the sewage treatment plants. These were located in Eelde, Feerwerd, Onderdendam, Wehe den Hoorn, Leek, Winsum, and Delfzijl.
Noorderzijlvest aims to be energy neutral by 2025
We try to use less energy wherever possible and also produce sustainable energy ourselves. This includes fermenting sewage sludge to produce biogas. The treatment plants require a lot of power. From now on, we will generate a large part of the energy we need here sustainably using solar panels. In the Westerkwartier, a new treatment plant will eventually be built at the Gaarkeuken site. This will replace the current plants in Marum, Zuidhorn, and Gaarkeuken. Once this new treatment plant has been completed, solar panels will also be installed here.
The solar panels can generate approximately 1,500,000 kWh per year.
There are now a total of approximately 4,000 solar panels at the seven locations mentioned, with a capacity of 1.7 MWp. If the new Gaarkeuken wastewater treatment plant also has solar panels in the future, the solar panels will supply approximately 12% of the energy used by the water board.