These students are helping student houses install solar panels

With five couches, a worn out dining table, and a handful of posters and plates on the wall, ‘Studentenrusthuis In den Wijngaert’ looks like any other student house in the Netherlands. But the Virgiel house on Delft’s Spoorsingel will soon get what few other student houses have – solar panels on the roof.

The panels, which will be installed in three or four months’ time, are partly thanks to former resident Berend Krans of the Student in de Zon (student in the sun) foundation. Excluding student flats, Rodenburg and Krans say that Delft only has two student houses with solar panels. Not entirely coincidentally, the other house is only two numbers away and Sieb Rodenburg, co-founder of Student in de Zon, used to live there. The two students’ foundation has a mission: to make the country more sustainable by installing solar panels on as many student houses in the Netherlands as possible.

Pilots with seven houses
They are starting in Delft. Apart from two houses on the Spoorsingel, the students have their eye on six other houses which will be part of seven pilots that the foundation will run over the next six  months.

The idea for Student in de Zon started about two-and-a-half years ago when Rodenburg (Industrial Ecology student) and Krans (Hydraulic Engineering student) were having a coffee together. They were already working on sustainability, and were aware of what they ate and the clothes they wore. “But as soon as you go home, you feel pretty powerless as a student. You have a student income so little money for sustainability,” says Rodenburg. “On top of that you are dependent on whether the landlord is interested and you never get anything back from your investment as you move house within a year or two. We want to give students the option to be more sustainable.”

Old housemates help
So the pair of them got thinking. How can you ensure that students can obtain solar panels? How do you get a landlord to cooperate and how do you then arrange the maintenance? They found the answers among old housemates and Duwo, the housing provider. Duwo is now the official partner of Student in de Zon. “That’s really great as Duwo helped arrange the legal picture.” The housing provider arranged the necessary insurances and the maintenance of the panels. “This meant that the solar panels continued to work as they should when the residents moved.”

And the old housemates? They helped with the financial side. The solar panels of both houses on the Spoorsingel were paid for in part by old housemates. Martijn van Eijck, one of the current residents on the Spoorsingel, says that the old residents did not think about a donation or loan for long. “They are also working on sustainability and solar panels in their own lives.” Some of the money was a donation, another part is paid back by the residents over the years. “We made sure that the monthly payments were lower than the amount that the students were able to save every month through their lower enery costs,” explains Rodenburg. Martijn adds that “The panels have not yet been installed, but the savings could be significant. We expect it to be about a few hundred euros every month.”

Passing it on
When Krans and Rodenburg set up their foundation two-and-a-half years ago, the war in Ukraine had not yet broken out and the energy crisis had not yet happened. Since then the solar panel market has changed radically. “Shortly before we started we did some market research, but everything we found then is now outdated. The waiting times have risen enormously and the solar panel suppliers who we then approached are now not even answering the telephone.”

But they still managed to get their hands on panels. Seven houses are on the planning for the near future. And after that? They hope to pass their work on to other students. The Student in de Zon team now also includes Geesje Creijghton (Industrial Design Engineering student) and Glenn Bommelé (Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management student). “In a couple of years, students will think us ‘old’. I see residents already wondering what the old folks want from them,” jokes Rodenburg. “Student in de Zon works best when it is for and run by students. We hope that the foundation will continue to be run by students and make a sustainable impact.”

• Do you live in a student house and do you want to know what the options are? Then contact Student in de Zon through their Instagram page (in Dutch) or website (in Dutch).