Weerdinge village house is almost completely energy neutral. “Only on days when there is no wind and the sun is not shining, there is a chance that we will use the grid,” says Jan Schoonbeek, board member of the village hall. This weekend, six small wind turbines were installed, allowing the village hall to generate both wind and solar energy.
Schoonbeek shrugs. “It just depends on what you find special.” For the board of the village hall, sustainability was a logical step. “We have refrigerators, freezers here and the playgroup is also connected to us. So we are a good consumer.”
Solar panels were already installed a few years ago, so wind turbines were added this weekend. Cabinets measuring one by one meter, which stand almost inconspicuously on the roof of the village hall. “There are now six,” says Schoonbeek. “We won’t post any more at first. First let’s see how these render.”
Schoonbeek is not afraid that the wind turbines are there for the cat’s fiddle. “We have been taking wind measurements on the roof for more than a year and it is actually always blowing. The power we generate is collected in batteries behind the village hall. So we do not feed back into the grid. It is purely for our own use .”
The combination of two types of sustainable energy is not common. “I don’t know if we are the first village hall in the Netherlands to have this, but we are certainly the first village hall in the North to do it this way,” says Schoonbeek.
That also presents challenges. “The municipality of Emmen does have rules when it comes to solar panels and wind turbines, but not when it comes to a combination of both. So we are now a kind of pilot for the municipality, to see how this goes and what is involved. “
The village hall had to largely pay for the wind turbines itself. “Unfortunately, we have not been able to tap into subsidies for this,” says Schoonbeek. “We did receive some subsidy for the solar panels, but we had to pay for the wind turbines and the battery pack ourselves.”
On the other hand, the village hall saves money by supplying a lot of labor itself. “And we are not doing too well as a village hall. We also received a contribution from the Oranjefonds.”