Students from Sustainable Energy Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Building Services Engineering & Common Entry Engineering traveled to Amsterdam as part of their studies.
The trip to Amsterdam on 20-23 Jan 2020 was attended by engineering students studying
Sustainable Energy Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Building Services Engineering and Common
Entry Engineering. The students were from all years from first year to MSc students.
Part of the international tour was kindly sponsored by Winthrop Engineering and evening dinner was
provided for the group of students.
The first site visit on Tuesday was to the Atrium Building in the Zuidas Region of Amsterdam. This
office building was founded in 1972 and a huge sustainability make-over commenced in 2018. The
building is BREEAM-certified ‘Excellent’. The students were given an interesting tour of the building
by building manager Henk Appels and his colleague Richard, facilities engineer and allowed access to
many areas including the plant room and offices where the technical aspects of how the building is
heated and cooled could be seen. The building makes use of a bore hole geothermal energy system
where excess heat collected from the building cooling system in summer is stored underground in a
hot well. In winter this heat is extracted from the well to heat the building.
On Tuesday afternoon the students were given an informative tour by Bart den Otter of the new
Circl building created by ABN AMRO. The building was designed and constructed according to
sustainable and circular principles. The building is energy efficient and designed such as to make as
little impact as possible on the planet. Sustainable building materials and construction techniques
were used. Many of the materials in the Circl building already had a previous life and construction
techniques used means that materials can easily be put to new uses in the future.
On Tuesday evening the students attended the innovation tour in the Ajax Stadium – Johan Cruijff
Arena. As well as access to the dressing rooms and the pitch, the students also got a tour of the
energy storage centre. The 3 MW / 2.8 MWh system was built from 148 reused Nissan Leaf electric
car batteries and is among the largest such projects in Europe.
The final site visit on Wednesday morning was to a Data Farm facilitated by Mercury Engineering and
HN Electrical. The students were brought on an impressive tour of three different phases of the data
farm project. The engineers on site included past graduates of Electrical Engineering in WIT and
were extremely generous with their time and provided fantastic insight in the facility and the role of
engineers on site. Thank you to Mercury Engineering Project Manager Jack, site Engineer Keith and
Eddie, Colm, James, Adam & Jamie from HN Electrical for giving so generously of their time.
On Wednesday evening students took some time to explore the sights of Amsterdam and take in the
atmosphere in a modern city like Amsterdam, again this year students over the 2 busy days learned
how Amsterdam is making strides to improve energy efficiency and sustainability within the city,
while also making Amsterdam a comfortable and attractive city to live in
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