is an ideal instrument for studies of the launch of CMEs heading towards interplanetary space. LOFAR's imaging capabilities will yield information on whether such a CMEs might hit the Earth. This makes LOFAR is a valuable instrument for space weather studies. Solar observations with LOFAR will include routine monitoring of the solar activity as the root of space weather. Furthermore, LOFAR's flexibility enables rapid responses to solar radio bursts with follow-up observations. Solar flares produce energetic electrons that not only lead to the emission of non-thermal solar radio radiation. The electrons also emit X-rays and heat the ambient plasma. So joint observation campaigns with other ground- and space-based instruments, e.g. RHESSI, Hinode, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and eventually the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope and the Solar Orbiter provide insights into this fundamental astrophysical process. Timeline In the early 1990s, the study of aperture array technology for radio astronomy was being actively studied by ASTRON - the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. At the same time, scientific interest in a low-frequency radio telescope began to emerge at ASTRON and at the Dutch Universities. A feasibility study was carried out and international partners sought during 1999. In 2000 the Netherlands LOFAR Steering Committee was set up by the ASTRON Board with representatives from all interested Dutch university departments and ASTRON. In November 2003 the Dutch Government allocated 52 million euro to fund the infrastructure of LOFAR under the Bsik programme. In accordance with Bsik guidelines, LOFAR was funded as a multidisciplinary sensor array to facilitate research in geophysics, computer sciences and agriculture as well as astronomy. In December 2003 LOFAR's Initial Test Station (ITS) became operational. The ITS system consists of 60 inverse V-shaped dipoles; each dipole is connected to a low-noise amplifier (LNA), which provides enough amplification of the incoming signals to transport them over a 110 m long coaxial cable to the receiver unit (RCU). On April 26, 2005, an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer was installed at the University of Groningen's math centre, for LOFAR's data processing. At that time it was the second most powerful supercomputer in Europe, after the MareNostrum in Barcelona. Since 2014 an even more powerful computing cluster (correlator) called COBALT performs the correlation of signals from all individual stations. In August/September 2006 the first LOFAR station (Core Station CS001, aka. CS1 ) was put in the field using pre-production hardware. A total of 96