Cosun Beet Company’s speciality factory runs on self-generated green energy

The Cosun Solar Park is situated on a section of the old sugar factory industrial site on land that was used for industrial water purification and processing and storage of beet soil. After the closure of the sugar factory and dismantlement of site, industrial repurposing was desired, preferably of a sustainable nature.

“Cosun Solar Park has become part of that, with approximately 17 hectares of solar panels,” says Paul Hagens, Manager of Terrain Developments at Cosun Beet Company. “The underlying idea is to provide our speciality factory, which produces products like sugar cubes, brown sugar and powdered sugar for consumers, with green energy. This is fully in line with our goal to be the greenest, most innovative and most successful sugar beet processor in the world.” The rest of the site, the largest part, will be redeveloped into a sustainable business park with a dock.

Cosun Solar Park comprises one large solar field of nearly seven hectares and six smaller solar fields totalling more than 10 hectares. The solar fields are being realized by contractor KiesZon. Engineering firm Encon acted as an advisor during the development and realization. The large solar park established by Cosun Beet Company is directly connected to the public power grid via the connection to the sugar speciality factory and thus supplies to the specialty factory and partly to the grid. The six small solar fields acquired by the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development are connected directly to the grid.

Hagens: “Cosun Beet Company's solar field produces green energy for the equivalent of 3,250 households. The specialty factory consumes as much electricity per year as 2,200 households. So there is still green energy left over, which is also used to make the electricity use of the specialty factory in Roosendaal more sustainable.”

CO2 savings 
The six other solar fields acquired by the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development will start supplying energy in mid-December. The entire Cosun Solar Park Puttershoek produces enough power on an annual basis for around 7,600 households. This translates into an annual savings of 12 million kg of CO2.
 

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