Dutch football stadium installs second battery

A football match held at the largest stadium in the Netherlands last week ran entirely off green energy, following the installation of a second “super” battery.

Amsterdam’s Johan Cruyff Arena, home to the AFC Ajax football team and the host of regular matches and concerts, deployed a second battery in recent weeks, following the installation of a 3 MW storage system in 2018. The system was billed as Europe’s largest project to use secondhand batteries and batteries from electric vehicles in a commercial building.

The new installation takes the stadium’s combined storage capacity to 8.6 MWh, with energy generated locally from 4,200 solar panels installed on the stadium’s roof, as well as a wind turbine in the village of Oudendijk and a local solar park. Until recently, the storage system had been used for emergency power needs, but it is now expected that future soccer matches and concerts will run on entirely green energy.

“We are incredibly proud that we can take this major step together with our partners in making football matches more sustainable,” said Tanja Dik, the arena’s CEO. “Our ambition is to realize Net Positive events by 2030. This means that we only want to make a positive contribution to society and the climate.” 

The project was co-funded by the European Union and the European Regional Development Fund.

From pv magazine