Stadshaard (lit. City Hearth) Enschede officially opened

Today, the city of Enschede and power company Essent have officially commissioned the so-called Stadshaard (City Hearth). The Stadshaard in Enschede is Essent's new combined heating and power station for the Roombeek district. It is a gas-fired power plant that produces electricity, whilst the heat is used for heating distribution in the district. Currently, about 900 dwellings and 70,000 m2 of business accommodation have their heating supplied. Due to the artistic Delft-blue appearance of the hearth, the Roombeek district has gained a striking eye catcher.

The new combined heating and power station has been built in a prominent spot, on the edge of the site (called At the Brewery) on which the Grolsch Brewery was formerly located. Due to the firework disaster in 2000, a large part of this site and the district of Roombeek has been levelled. This adversity has been seized upon by the city of Enschede to accomplish a complete redevelopment of the area, where dwellings and buildings can be supplied with heating in an efficient manner .
The Stadshaard contains technical plants to generate and distribute heating and electricity. With these types of projects, the heat generation should take place close to the consumers, to prevent heat loss (the longer the cables, the more the loss).

Combined heating and power stations are usually neutral, industrial buildings situated in unobtrusive locations. Because the Stadshaard is situated in a prominent location in architectural Roombeek, the building has been given a striking appearance.
The building was designed by Architects Cie in Amsterdam and is characterised by the striking wall cladding of Delft-blue tiles of 1 by 1 m square. It is richly illustrated as a whole and artist Hugo Kaagman has placed images on the tiles that are associated with the production of electricity and well-known icons from Enschede's history, such as Jan Cremer and the Grolsch swing-top bottle. The Dutch warmth and cosiness exuded by the design immediately indicates the function of the building: the heating of Roombeek.
With its height of 10 metres and a chimney of 42 metres, the building is the largest Delft-blue work of art in the Netherlands.

Today, 1 October, the Stadshaard was Christened with Grolsch brewery water by Peter Terium, CEO of Essent and Hans van Agteren, alderman of the city of Enschede.
Peter Terium about the Stadshaard: “I am proud that Essent has a stable reputation in sustainable energy and is the largest supplier of Green Energy. We have committed ourselves to the climate objectives and have in the meantime gained solid experience in the large-scale application of sustainable production. But smaller-scale projects also fit in with this approach. Essent Local Energy Solutions – the designers of this plant - has the experience and knowledge to build these types of heating distribution systems. And they are working on innovation and improvement of the process every day”.

Hans van Agteren: “I hope that all the people in Enschede are proud of the building and what it stands for. But above all, I hope that the end-users, for whom we are doing all this, will see it as their own Roombeek hearth of which everybody says: we feel at home here, that building is in the right place, as we are”.

Published: 01 October 2010