One of the world’s largest ports has received a solar boost, with the completion of a 3,100-panel rooftop PV installation on a storage facility in Rotterdam.
The record-breaking solar power installation – the largest in Rotterdam to date – covers roughly 7,200-square metres. The array has been installed on global shipping giant Samskip subsidiary frigoCare’s 14,000 pallet-capacity cold-store building in the port city.
The system is capable of generating 750,000kWh of electricity a year – equivalent to the annual needs of 250 Dutch households. The plant will contribute to the Port of Rotterdam’s Sustainability Strategy, which has already seen 200 MW of wind energy installed at Europe’s largest transit hub.
Rotterdam was once known as the “gateway to the world”, for its strategic location on the nexus of the North Sea, Rhine river and Ruhr industrial region. While it can no longer lay claim to the title of world’s largest port (that now belongs to Shanghai), it does aim to become the cleanest, with a solar power generation target of 20 GW/h by 2018, increasing to 1,000 GW/h by 2030.
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The system was installed and is owned by Dutch renewable energy company Zon Exploitatie Nederland (ZEN).
“Rotterdam has great ambitions to be a green city, but has not so far been that successful, ranking low in terms of solar power generation amongst all Dutch municipalities,” said ZEN Director and founder, Michel Peek.
“With this investment it will rise significantly up that list, and we hope this project will provide confidence for other similar installations in the months and years to come.”
The solar panels are expected to supply 30 percent of the 2.7 gigawatts of electricity the facility uses each year. Any excess power generated will flow back to Rotterdam’s power grid.
“When we upgraded our cold-store, which is primarily used to store frozen fish, we wanted to make it as environmentally friendly as possible,” said Jan Bouman, Managing Director at frigoCare. “The partnership with ZEN has enabled us to reduce our annual carbon emissions by around 325 tonnes a year. It is an example which we hope others in the logistics and transport industry will follow.”
The Netherlands was recently in the news concerning another major solar power related project – an electric vehicle charging network that has rapidly grown throughout the country.
