The Herons opent seizoen met jeugdwedstrijden en duurzame batterij

BC The Herons opened its season in Heerhugowaard with more than a clean slate on the field. Saturday 18 April brought four youth games and the official start-up of the club’s Baseball Battery, a storage system meant to keep the lights on and the bills down.

The timing was deliberate. The Herons had already put solar panels on the clubhouse roof three years ago, and the new battery lets the club hold on to that power for later use instead of losing the benefit when the sun goes down. That matters at a baseball and softball club, where the biggest energy draw often comes during field lighting and evening activity, not in the middle of the day.

Ronald van Langen and Erik Wegman said the battery is another step in making the vereniging more sustainable. Wegman said the system charges when solar production is high or when electricity prices are low, then sends power back when demand or prices rise. He also pointed to an added safeguard that matters for any busy sports complex: the battery can provide emergency power during a failure.

The investment lands at exactly the right moment. The Rijksoverheid says the salderingsregeling for solar power ends on 1 January 2027. After that, owners of solar panels will no longer be able to offset their own use with the electricity they generate, although a feed-in payment will remain. For clubs like The Herons, that shift changes the math around every kilowatt-hour produced on the clubhouse roof.

The club has built its case around scale and reach. The Herons describes itself as the largest baseball and softball association in Noord-Holland-Noord, with members stretching from Den Helder to Amsterdam. Its program covers baseball, softball, Beeball and slowpitch, and the website points players toward membership, tryouts, sponsors, matches and activities. That breadth gives the battery a significance beyond the energy bill: it is part of keeping a large club affordable, active and open.

The Herons also ties that ambition to the wider sport structure, including the local sportakkoord in Heerhugowaard. In a club that wants to stay low-threshold for recreational players while also developing talent for the next level, the battery is more than a technical upgrade. It is a piece of club policy, youth policy and financial policy all working in the same direction.