“With long-term projects you have a lot of information. You cannot expect stakeholders to archive that themselves. Here you have bundled all the information in a very nice way.”

The plan was once to use this area for housing, but then the housing crisis hit and the plan was shelved. Renee: “A solar park works well as a break landscape. You get a permit for 25 years. By then there may be other forms of energy and then it will be reviewed.

As a municipality, it has been decided that we will not go for maximum generation, but also for good biodiversity. That is why it is also determined what distance you need between the solar panels to maintain or increase biodiversity.” 

The stakeholders in this project are the local residents. The project will run for several years and one of the main challenges is to inform local residents. “As a municipality, you want to share your information as transparently as possible. I think that's how it should be. What matters to me is that you went through a good process, regardless of the outcome.”  

The question for local residents is how much they will notice from the solar park. “It is difficult that the project has been running for several years and the specifications of the plan are subject to change. For example, it is now known that, in addition to solar panels and inverters, there will also be a high-voltage station in the park. For local residents, the main question is how much noise comes from that.” 

The Municipality of Groningen tries to inform the stakeholders as well as possible, by means of information meetings, sending letters and e-mails, but also visiting local residents. “Previously there was also a OneDrive that contained all the information. The problem, however, was that it was not clear. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine what it will look like in practice based on texts.”

When the project entered a new phase, the question was what could be done to better inform local residents. Renee: “The Online Visitor Center came at exactly the right time for this. With long-term projects like this you have a lot of information. These are not only reports, but also reports of the meetings. You cannot expect stakeholders to archive that themselves. Here you have bundled all the information in a very nice way.”

“Our goal with the Online Visitor Center is to give an idea of ​​what the solar park will look like. That is now very clearly visualized. We also have a bookcase in the Online Visitor Center. It contains all the investigations we have done and it also contains a noise report. For example, we try to give local residents insight into possible noise from the inverters and the high-voltage substation. 

What I also really like is the participation wall. This allows us to actively point people to new information. We then send local residents a letter and an email, but in the Online Visitor Center we make it bold. So you know immediately; this is happening now.”

Renee: “Participation is becoming increasingly important. In this way you can simply organize participation properly. Of course, the physical component remains important, but with an Online Visitor Center you always have a good archive. I think these kinds of resources will only become more important. Once the Environmental Act is in place, all this will be laid down more clearly. It makes little difference to us, we already work that way.”

“For me personally, it is nice that the system behind it is easy. We can set everything up. And if I want something bigger changed, it's nice that the Imagineers respond quickly. Sometimes something like this just has to be done quickly. And those deadlines are always met. I think the biggest advantage is that I can adjust things myself. I like to hand over things to a good party, but I want to be able to access them myself. If there is an error, you can immediately correct it yourself.”