About me

My name is Sjoerd Overpelt and I am a Project Developer at WES since May 2018. In the beginning of my work at WES, the focus was mainly on local projects with cooperatives, and the participation of local citizens. However, since 2019 my role became increasingly international.

Nowadays, I combine domestic projects (also due to Covid-travel restrictions) with international projects in countries such as Belgium, Greece but also intercontinental, like for example the Caribbean and Africa.

Besides a passion for renewable energy, I have a big interest in sports, especially football and CrossFit. Furthermore, I am infected with the travel virus.

Whether it is a road trip in Italy or a backpacking adventure in Australia or South-East Asia, I am always in for new adventures, both business and private.

After completing my bachelor’s degree Commercial Economics – Sports marketing (HES School of Economics and Business in Amsterdam) in 2008, I first started travelling for 10 months. Subsequently, I started my career in 2009 at Monsanto Company in Enkhuizen, The Netherlands, serving agricultural customers in the Benelux, UK and Scandinavia. After a career in digital marketing, I have been working in renewable energy for 3 years now.

For the domestic Dutch market, the focus is on agricultural companies (large farms) that have the goal to make their electricity consumption more sustainable, using wind energy, whether or not combined with solar PV.

I support customers from start to finish in developing a sustainable solution for their energy consumption. Therefore, I am in close contact with all kinds of stakeholders that play a role during development, construction and operational phase. So, I am not only involved in sales but also in the organization of project development and implementation.

In addition to farmers, I also have close contacts with cooperatives that want to realize sustainable projects and thus contribute to the climate goals in the Netherlands and the Paris Agreement.
The ‘Volksmolen-project’, completed in 2019, is a good example of a cooperative project in which the local citizen also benefits from the proceeds. 

Let’s jump into the car and drive a little more south to our neighbors in Belgium. Lately there has been quite some interest in our turbines from the Flemish Region. This resulted in the development of a number of projects, not only with farmers but also industrialists who want to become more sustainable.

Okay, it’s time to catch a plane, although…off course we should do a check on travel-restrictions first, because of the Covid-19 Pandemic. As soon as the light hits green, we will fly to Greece for the development of large-scale turbine projects. In cooperation with local project developers on the mainland, but also on some of the many Greek islands the turbine projects will be established.

With these types of projects, WES has a specific focus to further develop the distributed wind energy solutions for isolated and weak grids within the 400 volts distribution network. As these are large scale projects, we are closing the gap between the investor needs, the project developer, and landowners’ benefits.

As Project Developer at WES, I work with farmers, industrials, cooperatives and project developers throughout Europe, the Caribbean and Africa, to help them to accelerate the energy transition with the most reliable medium sized wind turbines in Europe.