Van den Hoek bothers – Heinenoord (NL)

Specialists in energy storage

Arie Pieter and Peter van den Hoek from Heinenoord were looking for new innovations for their company with 200 hectares of arable farming. In 2009 they started installing 66 solar panels on one of their warehouses and became energy neutral. Not long after, they installed 88 solar panels in a potato storage facility at their second location. The construction of a new potato storage facility in 2012 once again offered opportunities.

The entrepreneurs decided to apply for an SDE subsidy for 425,000 kilowatt hours per year, enough to cover the roofs of the existing and new warehouse. The SDE subsidy was awarded in the autumn of 2016. In total, the brothers installed 1566 solar panels of 275 watt peak on the roof, which corresponds to 330,000 kilowatt hours per year.

PROJECT Battery Storage System

Of the annual capacity of 330,000 kilowatt hours, 30,000 kilowatt hours is for own use and 300,000 kilowatt hours for sale as green energy. They can sell that. The entrepreneurs decided to be well informed by suppliers and visited, among others, arable farmer Jan Reinier de Jong in Odoorn and pig farmer Jan Roefs in Woensdrecht. They already had a storage system in place.

Based on the good experiences with ATEPS, they decided to buy a battery storage system with a capacity of 500 kilowatt hours and had their own transformer installed with a capacity of 630 kilovolt-amperes.

There is an interesting tax measure for storage systems in the form of EIA (Energy Investment Allowance).

By adding an energy storage system, they can now trade energy in the EPEX/imbalance markets and support frequency stabilization.

A nice piece written about the brothers van den corner click here