Lowlands Festival Car Park Becomes Largest Solar Carport In The World

Energy company Solarfields and Mojo, which is Live Nation’s Dutch operation, are realizing the world’s largest solar carport on the grounds of Lowlands Festival in Biddinghuizen, Holland.

Solarfields is financing the project. Work begins in November on the Lowlands car park. The surface of the sustainable parking area will cover a total of 35 hectares and offer space for some 15,000 cars. 

90,000 solar panels will delivers a capacity of 35 MWp, enough to supply around 10,000 households with sun energy, according to Solarfields own estimations. 

It’s the equivalent of the power consumption of around 100 festival weekends per year. 

Lowlands, which uses some 300,000 kWh of electricity each edition, generates almost all of it is power with the help of power generators, but won’t be tapping into the new energy source on its doorstep just yet.

A Mojo representative told Pollstar that, in the first year, “all energy the solar carport generates will be provided to the general electricity network, so households can use it. We are working on a solution to use the electricity ourselves too but this will take a little more time.”

The solar carport remains permanently at the Lowlands car park, hence it seems like the logical next step for the festival to tap into this huge energy source es well.

No parking space will be lost to the solar panel construction.

Lowlands director Eric van Eerdenburg believes that the festival’s young visitors will experience the effects of climate change and environmental pollution in their daily lives, if concrete measures are not taken quickly.

“As a festival organization we want to be part of the solution and contribute to an optimistic view of the future. We hope to be a source of inspiration for our visitors and to contribute – no matter how little – to making the world more sustainable,” he said.

Jelmer Pijlman, director of Solarfields, said he’s been working on the solar car park project with Mojo over the past two-and-a-half years. He said, “the location is perfect for making the Netherlands more sustainable, and this project is a wonderful example of multiple land use: parking and sustainable energy generation on the same surface.”