Jeroen Haringman

My name is Jeroen Haringman, and together with my wife I live in Hilversum (), I was born in May, 1975, and I work at the IT-department of a large energy company.

My interest in renewable energy and everything surrounding that started in an unusual way. When I was about 17 years old I somehow got a catalogue of electronics mail order company Conrad Electronic (). This company sells, among a million other things, solar panels. I was immediately fascinated which could turn (sun)light into electricity. Except for some experimenting with small solar panels powering radios etc. a ‘real’ installation had to wait until more money and more roof space had appeared in my life.

If we fast-forward ten years in time the internet has appeared which allowed my access to the extremely interesting websites of Floris Wouterlood () and Peter Segaar (). Both answered my e-mails for more information and we installed the first 555Wp of solar panels on the roof of our rental apartment in June 2006. Because we had also sharply reduced our electricity consumption this installation produced a large part of what we used. Once you’ve been bitten by the ‘solar bug’ there’s no way back, the first addition was installed in March, 2007, with 300Wp in second-hand solar panels. By the end of 2007 we moved to our current house, and because the roof is not facing south (more like WSW, which decreases production by 10-15%) we added another 510WP for a total of 1365Wp. At the beginning of 2009 we installed a small 100Wp solar panel as awning above our front door, and in april 2010 the final (for now…) 660Wp arrived on the east side of our house for a grand total of 2125Wp. This produces a substantial yearly surplus which we sell to our energy provider (Greenchoice ()). I am convinced that solar energy can play a very big role in the transition in a sustainable society, even in the Netherlands.

Besides solar panels I’ve become interested in other areas of energy conservation and renewable energy generation. Especially in the area of transport there is al lot to gain. I certainly hope that the development of electric vehicles will speed up so that we can phase out these hopelessly obsolete and inefficient fossil vehicles. To keep a close eye on the developments in this area I have made several test drives in electric vehicles, such as electric scooters, electric bicycles, a Twike, a CityEl, a Toyota plug-in Prius, a Mitsubishi i-MiEV, a electric Mini and an Innovan prototype. Although electric vehicles can certainly reduce fossil energy consumption, they cannot completely eliminate it in the short and medium term. That’s why I also promote scenarios and initiatives which try to solve the mobility problems without the motor car, because although electric cars can somewhat reduce the fossil energy consumption of the Netherlands and the world, they have a lot of disadvantages which prevent a true sustainable development of transport. A nice example of this can be found at www.carfree.com.

I’ve been a big fan of the World Solar Challenge for many years and I’ve reported extensively on it in 2007, 2009 and 2011.

With this website but also with appearances the main stream media (only local newspapers so far) I try to bring sustainability to the attention of as many people as possible. I think it’s necessary to strip it of its ‘hippie-image’. It’s perfectly possible to live nicely and comfortably with only a fraction of the energy consumption – although some thing will be done very differently from what we’re accustomed to now.