Energy prices are going through the roof, but Walter Pepers from Uden and Ad Vlems from Boekel are not worried about whether they will still get through the winter. They decided a few years ago to live off-grid, which means that they are now more generous.
“I don’t pay anything,” says Walter Pepers. “But that feels crooked when you hear that other people now have to pay so much.” As an environmental scientist, he is very concerned with nature and climate, which is why he lives with his wife and children in a prefab bungalow in the outskirts of Uden. They have hot water thanks to a heat pump and 40 solar panels on the roof provide electricity.
Ad Vlems from Boekel also wanted to live more sustainably, but he immediately took it a lot bigger. Ad not only built a super green house for himself, but made it a mission to set up an entire neighborhood that is self-sufficient: Ecodorp Boekel. “I lived ‘normally’ for a long time, until I became a father. I suddenly felt so responsible. I want to give my son the opportunities I had when I was born.”
“A large tank that gets 450 degrees in the summer will keep the heat in all year.”
His mission is accomplished. Ad has been living in the green mini village for almost two years now, which consists of 36 social rental homes. The houses are supplied with electricity and heat thanks to 600 solar panels. “They are connected to a large tank that reaches 450 degrees in the summer and retains the warm air all year round. When we turn on the heating, the water in the boilers is heated and distributed over our underfloor heating,” explains Ad.
Because there are no batteries that can store electricity for the whole year, Ad still has to knock on the door of an energy company in the winter. Walter has come up with a different solution for that. He has an arrangement with his neighbors, a hotel next door. It supplies them with a lot of power in the summer and gets it back in the winter. “As a neighborhood you should talk more often with a company that you can supply to, because they often have more favorable energy contracts,” he explains.
The only thing the two have to worry about is the rising food prices, you would think, but that is also arranged in the Ecodorp. “We have a food forest with hundreds of crops, from which we can get sixty percent of our food,” says Ad. “Everyone in the village works in the garden one or two days a week, so food is free for everyone.”
Walter isn’t going to do that. “I don’t have the time for that,” he laughs. “At least we don’t eat meat for the sake of the environment, but we don’t have to leave it for the money either.”