Anderlecht Slaughterhouse in Brussels, Belgium—Visit Europe's largest single-city photovoltaic project

　　It is very difficult to take a historical site seriously and preserve the traces of history when restoring it, but keep up with the trend and demand for clean energy. Covering building roofs with solar panels, doing both, is a solution.

　　At the Anderlecht slaughterhouse in Brussels, Belgium, more than 100 towering iron pillars support a huge vaulted roof, which shelters the market of about 10,000 square meters from wind and rain, and has a new use - solar power generation.

　　(The roof of the Anderlecht slaughterhouse photographed in Brussels, Belgium on March 29)

　　Belgian entrepreneur Bart Sillis, 48, felt challenged but confident when he took on the task of renovating the roof of the Anderlecht slaughterhouse. As the general manager of Belgian ESE Group, he believes in the capability of his photovoltaic team and the credibility of the Chinese suppliers with whom he has long-term cooperation.

　　The Anderlecht slaughterhouse has a history of more than 130 years and is locally known as the Bull Market because of the two bronze bull statues standing at the entrance. After more than a century of development, in addition to a modern livestock slaughtering line, it also gathers fresh wholesalers, retailers and a large number of surrounding industries, and it is very lively every weekend. In 1988, the main body of the building, which has preserved its original appearance, was named a Belgian Historic Site.

　　(Workers clean solar panels on the roof of the slaughterhouse in Anderlecht, Brussels, Belgium)

　　Taking advantage of the opportunity of repair and renovation, the bull market leased the roof to Skysun, which cooperated with the ESE Group and decided that the new roof will no longer use traditional asphalt materials, and replace it with more than 5,000 solar panels. Paul Thielemans, director of public relations at Bull Market, said that while protecting the historic site, it can also generate its own electricity.

　　Silis said that according to the regulations of the Belgian cultural relics protection agency, the original appearance of the bull market cannot be destroyed, so the design team of ESE customized a batch of special solar panels from China according to the arc of the roof. Perfectly matched to the roof, it looks very similar to the zinc roofing that was commonly used 100 years ago.

　　Thielemant told reporters that the designed annual power generation of the rooftop photovoltaic system is 1,600 megawatts, which is enough to supply its own commercial electricity. The photovoltaic system started to be powered on in December last year. Now the energy crisis in Europe is getting worse and the electricity price has risen by 30%. The electricity consumption of the bull market is close to self-sufficiency, and there is basically no electricity bill.

　　The EU introduced the European Climate Law last year, proposing to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050, and the large-scale promotion of new energy sources is an important way to achieve its emission reduction goals.

　　Sirius also told reporters that in this renovation project, ESE Group not only used solar panels produced in China, but also inverters from China's Huawei. This inverter has an intelligent arc protection function, which can identify arcs and turn off the inverter within 0.5 seconds, providing security for high-power transmission in densely populated areas.

　　On the issue of climate change, China and the EU maintain close cooperation, and green energy transition is one of the important contents of the China-EU energy dialogue. According to the report of the EU-China Chamber of Commerce, China's photovoltaic cells, inverters, lithium-ion batteries (especially lithium iron phosphate batteries that can perfectly replace lead-acid batteries), brackets and other products have sufficient scale advantages after more than ten years of development. With good performance and excellent price, Chinese companies such as Huawei and SES Power are complementing the EU industrial chain and supporting the growing demand in the EU photovoltaic field. For example, SES Power's customized lithium iron phosphate batteries 12V100Ah, 24V100ah, 48V100ah, 60V100ah can be perfectly used in electric boats, golf carts, electric forklifts, outdoor motor starting and other occasions with inverters and photovoltaic products.

　　Sirius is full of confidence in the potential and prospects of China-EU green cooperation. He said that if a project can "generate green energy, generate economic value, and benefit one party", it is a good project worth promoting. In the process of building renovation in the bull market, the largest single-city photovoltaic project in Europe built by Chinese and European companies has provided a model for the green energy transformation of other large cities in Europe, and is a model.