Winterswijk – Sustainability is a hot topic in construction. Both for our projects and our own site in Winterswijk, we at Sorba are looking at new ways to become more sustainable. Last year we took a big step with solar panels on our new third industrial hall and we have now expanded this further to a total of 1426 solar panels. This puts Sorba among the leaders in solar panels in Winterswijk and the surrounding area.
Many of the new projects coming in to Sorba involve high demands on sustainability, reusable materials and energy-saving, or even energy-generating solutions. In 2018, Sorba collaborated on Studio Solarix’s Solar Design facade project, which involved building an energy-generating facade. Partly as a result of these sustainability efforts at our projects, we started looking at the possibilities for sustainability within Sorba. We took a big step in this direction last year by installing 626 solar panels on the roof of our new Hall 3.
This tasted like more and so it was decided to see if our other roofs were suitable for solar panels. Our first production hall turned out to have room for as many as 800 solar panels. The new solar panels make Sorba one of the frontrunners in the field of solar energy in Winterswijk. These have been installed and commissioned by Zevenbergen Solar Energy in the past few weeks. With a total of 1426 solar panels, we now expect to achieve an annual output of 350,000 KwH. This is comparable to the energy consumption of about 70 households and is more than our own energy consumption of 325,000 KwH. With the surplus of self-generated energy, we are also looking at other forms of sustainability. Soon, our first lease drivers will switch to electric cars and charging stations will be installed in our car park so that cars can be charged with our own solar energy. In this way, Sorba wants to contribute to the energy transition and a more sustainable society.
