Farmers and local residents form a chain reaction as part of the opening of Windpark Zeewolde, the world’s largest ecological wind farm, on the outskirts of Zeewolde.
Image: AFP
The largest onshore wind farm in the Netherlands is now officially operational. The facility with 83 wind turbines is wholly owned by local residents. Around 200 households – mostly farmers – from the province of Flevoland are the investors.
un far from Amsterdam, the largest onshore wind farm in the Netherlands officially went into operation on Friday. According to the operator, the plant in Zeewolde with 83 wind turbines is also the largest of its kind that is owned entirely by residents of the surrounding region – mostly farming families.
Around 200 households in the agricultural region of the province of Flevoland, around 50 kilometers from the Dutch capital, have raised the investment totaling half a billion euros and are therefore the owners of the system, as the company Windpark Zeewolde announced. “Anyone in this area could get involved and invest, and 90 percent of people did,” said director Sjoerd Sieburgh Sjoerdsma.
The Zeewolde wind farms
With a rated output of 320 megawatts, the wind farm will produce “green” electricity for up to 300,000 households. The project shows that it is also possible to set up a wind farm without encountering resistance from the local population. “You can also see this as an opportunity, take the initiative and turn a burden into a joy,” said Sjoerdsma. Zeewolde’s “wind farmers” will sell their electricity to the energy company Vattenfall over the next 15 years.
