Thousands of new solar panels make Ballast Nedam ready for summer

Based on our sustainability philosophy, we have decided to use only green energy for all our activities. We want to produce this energy ourselves, generating as much energy as we need by 2040.

Investing in solar panels

Because of these goals, we started investing extensively in solar panels. This is proceeding rapidly: we are now generating approximately 12% of our own energy with our own solar panels and wind turbines. Examples of these investments:

• We had 2480 solar panels installed by Zonnegilde on the roofs of Ballast Nedam Materieel in Almere. On an average sunny day, we produce about 6,000 KWh of solar energy from these panels. That's comparable to the amount used by two households in one year.
• This summer, 1149 panels with a capacity of 528.540 Wp will be installed on the roofs of the Leerdam location.
• The new Laudy Bouwservice site and the current Hoco Beton site will most likely also be fitted with solar panels.

Curious how this works? Watch the video below:

From investment to use

In Almere, we currently use the solar energy for all activities at the office and in the workshops. The saws, welders and grinders therefore work on electricity generated by ourselves. But the coffee machines and the charging of the forklift trucks also run on our own solar energy, as does the tower crane on the premises.

On the construction sites

Construction sites are also getting more and more solar panels, for example thanks to our pantry trailer with solar roof and solar frames on the construction units. We have 73 of these frames, each with 8 solar panels. The 584 panels (175.200 Wp) are located, for example, on the Prinses Amaliahaven project and on building sites belonging to our subsidiary Heddes Bouw & Ontwikkeling.

Supplying energy back

We use the power that we generate ourselves, but it sometimes happens that we do not use it at all. At weekends, for example, when we are not at work. At those times, we feed energy back to the grid.

Can we also store energy? We are currently investigating this. If that succeeds, we can use energy at a later time, for example for charging electric vehicles. In the meantime, we have already gained experience with batteries that allow us to store energy and use it to cope with peak loads. The desire is to be able to transmit energy to other owned locations as well. We want to develop this further, so that all solar energy is actually used.

Improve and expand

We want to continuously improve ourselves by covering all our office and workshop roof areas with solar panels. Thanks to our own energy, we need to buy less external power and we are less dependent on connection to the grid. With new investments on the horizon, the possibilities continue to grow, both in the offices and on the construction sites.