Farmer Michael Eavis’s Worthy Farm, best known as the home of Glastonbury Festival, has taken another step towards total sustainability with the installation of a second solar roof.
The dairy farm and its herd of 400 cows already have one of the UK’s largest private solar arrays on one of its cowsheds, nicknamed the Mootel. Now Mr Eavis has added another array of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on a shed housing young calves and their mothers which will generate free electricity for milking the herd and keeping their milk cool.
Mr Eavis, pictured below, was so delighted with the performance of his first 1,100 panels since they were installed in autumn 2010 that he invited Solarsense, based at Backwell, near Bristol, back to put up another 200 panels.
The new array covers an area larger than a tennis court and will generate almost 45,000 kilowatt hours of free electricity every year for use on the farm and during the festivals.
It will also save more than 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, from being pumped into the atmosphere every year, while earning money under the Government’s Feed-in Tariff.
Mr Eavis’ goal is to run the farm as ecologically as possible. He said: “Generating our electricity using solar PV panels is fantastic and couldn’t get any better. It produces no smell or dirt, there’s no wages to pay for producing it and we get all this wonderful free electricity.”
Hannah Spungin of Solarsense, added: “We are delighted to be able to help Michael Eavis cut the farm’s carbon footprint even further. We hope the latest installation will encourage other farmers and businesses to think about the benefits of using renewable energy to reduce their own electricity bills and carbon emissions.”
