1/3 Thijs loves technology, and had been working on solar energy for his organ for months (photo: Facebook Thijs).
Thijs from Geldrop has something special. An organ that plays on solar energy. Last weekend he played with it for the first time, in Eindhoven. According to him, this is – in this form – the first in the Netherlands.
“I’ve been working on this for some time,” says Thijs. stand in between, even though it consumes almost nothing. But I also just enjoy working on this. I work in technology and studied at Eindhoven University of Technology. I enjoy working with the latest techniques. I had been puzzling everything together for a long time and last month the puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place.”
“This will keep me going for a long time.”
For a moment he feared that someone else had beaten him to it. “A fellow organ man in Groningen made the joke on April 1 that he also had solar panels on his organ. Then I thought for a moment: no one will believe me that I’m serious about this! But luckily that wasn’t too bad.”
“It is a ready-to-use foldable solar panel,” he explains. “You can just buy that in the shop. When I go into town with my organ, I put it on top. I also have a battery pack that I put on the car. Also portable.”
“You don’t hear a hum between songs anymore.”
The panels are two meters long and fifty centimeters wide. They fit exactly like a roof over the organ. And another advantage: you no longer hear a hum between songs.
On sunny days, the solar panels provide about two-thirds of the organ’s energy consumption. “I can last for a very long time with that. And if the sun isn’t shining, I can still play ten to eleven hours on the batteries. That’s enough for the winter too, if it’s not sunny for once.”
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