Festival founder builds UK's biggest solar farm

The countdown is on as Glastonbury Festival goers pack up their belongings and get ready for what is looking like a very hot week ahead.
Sunshine is never guaranteed at the festival but that has not deterred the founder of the event from building Britain's biggest privately owned solar farm.

Michael Eavis, who will host the 40th festival at Worthy Farm, Pilton over the weekend will become the first person to take advantage of the Government's new, heavily subsidised scheme to create an array of solar panels.

It features the feed-in tariff, under which participants are paid for the electricity they produce, even if they use it themselves.

More than 1,100 panels, costing £550,000 and covering 1,500sqm, will be installed on the roof of the Mootel, the barn where Mr Eavis keeps his cows while the festival is held on his fields.

The panels will generate 200 kilowatts of electricity, enough power in a year to meet the needs of 40 homes.

Mr Eavis will sell the electricity to the National Grid at a premium rate, guaranteed by the Government for 25 years. He expects to earn about £45,000 a year (£1,125,000 over 25 years) from the feed-in tariff as well as reducing his own energy bills, meaning that the system will pay for itself in six years.

Mr Eavis told The Times newspaper: "I've been planning this for a long time but the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has brought home just how urgent it is that we move to renewable electricity. We have already bought all the recycled fat from chip shops that we can find to run the generators during the festival and we wanted to create a permanent source of renewable energy. It makes sense to use some of the massive amount of free energy that comes from the sun."

He said that feed-in tariffs, which all homeowners will be obliged to pay for through higher energy bills, were a "great offer" for landowners such as him. Mr Eavis designed the barn roof to face south and reinforced girders were installed to support 22.5 tons of panels. Construction of the solar array will begin in August, and Mr Eavis is already planning to seek permission for a similar-sized array on another building.

"We will benefit from this. But when it starts generating a profit, I will spend all that money on more solar energy, so it will be a good investment for the nation," he said.

Mr Eavis is putting £50,000 of his own money into the project and the rest is being funded by Triodos Bank, which invests in renewable energy projects.

Hundreds of other farmers are expected to strike similar deals in the next few years.

The biggest solar array so far is on the side of the Co-op Tower in Manchester. Mr Eavis's is the biggest privately owned solar array and the largest mounted on a roof.

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