Solar park The Sun Willow reaches financial close

Financial close means that all necessary financing for the project has been secured, allowing construction to proceed without interruption. From this point on, materials for construction can be ordered. Because of long delivery times, it is important that this is done as soon as possible. “It was a lot of fun to make the contracts and make sure that everything that is important for the Sun Willow is included in them,” says Liesbeth ten Brink of GreenTrust Consultancy. Liesbeth was involved in drawing up the contracts with the contractors, the construction and maintenance of the solar park, and arranging the insurance.

Sun at wind
Solar Willow’s solar panels are installed at Den Tol Wind Farm, which consists of nine impressive wind turbines providing 80,000 MWh of power, good for about 25,000 households. Since June 2022, these wind turbines have been operating. Because there was space between the turbines and capacity was still available on the wind farm cable, it was decided to place solar panels at the wind farm. Sun and wind complement each other well: often there is sun when there is no wind, and vice versa.

Cable pooling and landscaping
Solar park the Sun Willow is a unique project. It makes use of cable pooling, the sharing of one network cable, allowing the solar farm to connect to the existing park cable of Windpark Den Tol. This means that both the wind and solar farms supply energy to the same purchasing station, eliminating the need to build a new purchasing station. In addition, natural and landscape incorporation has been taken into account in the design of the solar farm. For example, provision has been made for good light and space under the panels to promote soil life. On the south side of the solar park there will be a wide nature strip of 16 meters and on the east and west sides, thicket hedges will be planted. These measures will improve biodiversity and promote movement opportunities for animals.

Collaboration
“We worked with WindUnie at The Sun Willow. They led the project. We worked with the same initiators and notary as for Windpark Den Tol. This was great because we already knew each other. The cooperation went very smoothly,” explains Lisa Hoffard. Among other things, Lisa ensured that the already existing land agreements were translated into notarial deeds. ‘It was very nice for me to put new developments, such as the shared cable, into notarial practice and come up with new legal constructions for this,’ says Lisa.

Not only did Lisa and Liesbeth work on The Sun Willow from GreenTrust, Lieuwe Dragt and Peter Schoch worked on the financing, Jeroen Boerkamps helped negotiate agreements and Bojan Antonijevic made the drawings.

WindUnie led the project, had a big part in the consulting work and, among other things, made the cable pooling agreement on which Lisa also collaborated. As Lisa pointed out, cooperation with the other parties went very well. ‘Frank Simmes, one of the initiators, had an important role which made the financial close possible,’ Lisa explained. ‘ASN, as the financier of the wind farm, helped make the cable pooling possible, ING is the financier of the solar farm, Van Dijk De Jongh did the notarial part, WindUnie and some landowners are the initiators and the builder/contractor is ProfiNRG.

Outlook
Construction of the Sun Willow is expected to begin after this summer. GreenTruster Stan Reinders will supervise construction. The Solar Park is expected to be completed in early 2025.