Next to a pile of dried wood, Robin is curled up in her basket in the living room. Her boss Artur Jaschke has not had to fire up his antique gray wood stove yet this year. He doesn’t expect to need the stove until mid-November, he says, while a watery sun heats his living room through the open hatch. A welcome sunshine, because an expensive winter awaits him and his fellow residents in the Museum Harbor.
There are also neighbors with a small state pension. It’s going to be really bad for them this winter
Alexander Jasche Museum Harbor resident
The government wants to use generic measures to compensate households for their high energy bills this winter, but concerns about exceptional cases that threaten to miss the scheme are already trickling in. With their special energy supply, the historic ships in Amsterdam’s Museumhaven can almost be called an exception within an exception. The port residents fall outside the rules of the government in every way, while they, with their high consumption, desperately need the allowance.
Bottled gas
The boats still sail regularly and therefore do not have a fixed water and gas connection. The gas comes from bottles with propane. That’s where the trouble starts, because according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, households without a fixed gas connection are not eligible for a price ceiling. On the shore there is an electricity box that supplies all seventeen boats with electricity via their own connections. Complicated again, because for shared electricity connections, the 190 euro energy discount in the months of November and December will probably not be forthcoming. However, a ministry spokesperson emphasizes that this will be a very small group. He can’t really come up with examples. The municipality of Amsterdam, several energy suppliers in the capital and the regional grid operator are also not aware of such electricity constructions, let alone under which scheme they will soon fall.
If you live on a historic ship, you don’t just have to deal with extra energy guzzlers – add the inverters, pressurized water pumps and battery chargers to the consumption of an average household; the insulation value of such a ship is also not very good. The winter cold literally creeps into the ships, which absorb the falling water temperature with their metal carcasses. Jaschke knocks against the wooden ceiling in his bobbing living room with his fist. That will hang about 30 centimeters lower if he would like to insulate his ship even better. Standing upright is no longer possible. But perhaps even more important: the intervention would affect the historic character of the ship.
‘Three times over’
Just like solar panels on the deck or windmills in the mast, developments that the Amsterdam Museum Harbor Association (VMA) is struggling with. Two black plates of one by one meter shine on one of the ships. However green and economical, the example of innovation is at odds with the regulations that a historic ship must meet in order to be allowed to moor as a museum piece in the port.
Paul Versteege, treasurer of the VMA, points to an A4 with notes on his dining table. Last year the ship owners paid 22 cents per kWh, now that is already 63 cents and in November it will shoot up to 73 cents. “More than three times upside down!” If the joint consumption in the port is around 48,000 kWh, just like last year, the misery is “incalculable”, he says. The average income of these households is just above average, adds Jaschke. “Some here will be able to wear it just fine, but there are also neighbors with a small state pension. It’s going to be really bad for them this winter. They are very concerned.”
Residents regularly speak to Versteege on the shore. Whether he already knows anything about the compensation scheme. Whether the prices have skyrocketed again.
Nel Pols, Versteege’s wife, now thinks twice before putting an oven dish on the table. She postpones the wash she wants to do on a rainy day until a day when the laundry can dry in the sun. With all the uncertainty ahead, the port residents themselves will do what they can.