Industry News

Dutch football stadium leading the way with energy storage system

Visitors to the Cars Jeans Stadion, home of Dutch Eredivisie football club ADO Den Haag, are now able to charge their electric vehicle while watching a game thanks to energy storage provider Alfen.

The stadium uses solar panels positioned on its roof to generate its own renewable energy, and this energy is then used to power the venue’s lights and as a charging mechanism for supporters’ electric cars.

Alfen will supply a hub for electric vehicles comprising 20 charge points to the Dutch city of The Hague (Den Haag). The charging hubs will be connected to Alfen’s energy storage system.

Andreas Plenk, global sales director of energy storage at Alfen, said: “This project brings together all of Alfen’s areas of expertise: grid connections, EV charging equipment and energy storage. Integrating these areas of expertise will play an increasingly important role to incorporate the growing amount of renewables and electric vehicles, as these are causing imbalance on the electricity grid.”

The project has been awarded to Alfen by Scholt Energy Control, an energy supplier to businesses in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. In May, Alfen delivered its first storage system in the Netherlands through a wind farm for a consortium involving Scholt Energy Services, an affiliate of Scholt Energy Control.

Sander Drissen, business development manager at Scholt Energy Services, said: “This project is truly unique in the combination of use cases. We will use TheBattery of Alfen to store the oversupply of renewable energy generated during the day. This energy can then be used in the evenings when it is most needed. In this way, we make optimal use of the generated renewable energy.

“We will also smooth out the grid impact of a large number of electric vehicles that plug in at the same location at the same time. And finally, when the stadium is not being used, we can use the storage system for energy trading to further improve our business case.”

Cars Jeans Stadion opened in 2007 and has a capacity of 15,000.

Image: FaceMePLS