Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis today unveiled Britain’s biggest solar electricity system – on a cow shed.
Eavis, 74, hosts over 200,000 revellers at Worthy Farm, Somerset, every summer after founding the world famous festival in 1970.
He now plans to offset part of the carbon cost of the event with 1,100 solar panels on the shed roof that can generate 80 per cent of the farm’s electricity demand.
The panels cost around £600,000 will generate 200kW of power on a sunny day and £60,000 of electricity per year – making them the nation’s largest private solar electricity system.
Saving more than 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, the system is part of the Festival’s environmental commitment to ‘Love The Farm Leave No Trace’.
Eavis revealed he is looking forward to becoming an ”energy farmer” and said the panels will make a ”huge difference”.
He said: ”We now not only do the best festival in the world, we also have the best solar power system.
”This is going to be a fantastic project and we are very excited about starting work on it.
”We are always thinking about how we can improve the site and make the Festival and the farm greener.
”We have had renewable energy at the Festival since 1979, and we have tried to do more and more each year.
”This is going to be a flagship project which will make a huge difference to our carbon footprint not just during the festival but throughout the whole year.”
Eavis revealed that the system will pay for itself within nine years with the energy being used on site to power farming equipment such as milking pumps.
Any excess electricity will be sold to the National Grid and earn Worthy Farm 29 pence per unit of power.
Only the Co-Operative Group’s CIS tower in Manchester, which can generate 380kW, has a larger solar power output.
The move is the latest green addition the festival that began in 1979 with the part solar powering of the Croissant Neuf stage.
Well When you consider just how many people visit Glastonbury each year this Solar Cow Shed will definitely have a huge impact on the solar energy industry in the UK.
Anyone know which firm carried out this brilliant installation?
This is indeed a fantastic project. I look forward to see more companies like this. Let’s save the earth for more damages and also ourselves. There are also cheap solar panels in the market. Just check the link below:
Cheap Solar Panels