New floating solar farm to be built in Holland

A new floating solar farm has been granted permission to be built on a reservoir in the Netherlands.

The innovative technology will be completed this year, supplying renewable electricity to 600 homes in the local community.

The reservoir is large enough to fit 6,000 solar panels, making it home to the first floating solar farm in the country, and the second largest in Europe. The largest is located on a reservoir near London, which contains 23,000 solar panels.

Lingewaard Energy, a community energy developer, is building the project, which has been supported by Dutch bank ING providing €1.7 million of financing.

Floating solar technology is seen as ideal for a small, low-lying country, such as the Netherlands, which struggles with building solar projects on agricultural land.

“The combination of a solar park and a water reservoir is a nice example of a double use of space,” said Frans van Herwijnen from Lingewaard Energy.

Eva Parro de la Paz , director of Sustainable Project Finance at ING, commented that the project wasn't without its difficulties: “Despite the small size of the loan, it was a complex transaction”, she said. “Because the project’s entrepreneurs had limited financial means, the capital structure involved numerous equity partners, different types of subsidies, subordinated loans from an energy fund from the province of Gelderland, and crowdfunding from local citizens”.

“This is a relatively new technology”, she added, explaining that determining how much energy the project would produce was also a challenge.

“The oldest floating solar parks are four or five years old and they don’t have publicly available databases with sufficient operational data”.

Lingewaard is a town located in the east of the country, near to the border with Germany, and home to 50,000 inhabitants. 

 

Image Credit: ING Bank