Using renewable energy in football stadiums

The Stade de Suisse

With the Nelson Mandela Stadium in South African utilising power from green energy sources, such as nearby wind farms, for the World Cup next month, it seems that renewable energy has found a home in the world of football.

Situated near Johannesburg, the new wind farm was officially launched by Energy Minister Dipuo Peters and will be a 25-turbine Coega farm project in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM) in the Eastern Cape.

Installed by Belgian-based renewable energy company Electrawinds partnered with the Coega Development Corp, it is hoped that wind power will be able to power the stadium completely free of charge.

Achieving green goals

Utilising renewable energy into the world of football isn't a new trend, Bern's Stade de Suisse had, when it opened in 2005, the largest solar roof of any football stadium in the world with the panels covering a total of 12,000 square metres. While its record has been eclipsed by Taiwan's World Games stadium, it still produces more power than any other.

The stadium's roof has even become somewhat of a tourist attraction, with the environmentally-conscious climbing up to the roof to see how sunlight powers the stadium's lights. The roof produces 1.3 million kilowatts hours of electricity a year, enough to fuel 400 homes.

The stadium has won so much acclaim, it has even scooped the European Solar Prize. Speaking to Swissinfo.ch, Jakob Vollenweider, the head of solar and wind power projects at the FMB group, one of Switzerland's main energy firms, said there were three deciding factors that led to the 'solar stadium'.

"Firstly, the customers seemed interested in buying solar power; next there was a lot of surface area available for implementing a solar power station; finally a football stadium attracts of people, which was a good opportunity to familiarise people with solar power.

"With this project we have been able to give a new impetus to solar power. There have even been, and continue to be, attempts to imitate us," said Vollenweider.

Renewable energy in other football stadiums

There are three other football stadiums in Switzerland with smaller solar stations on their roofs: St Jakob's in Basel (since 2001), Letzigrund in Zurich (since 2008) and SRG Arena in St Gallen (since 2009).

While none of the stadiums in South Africa have solar panels, despite the sun shinning there 350 days of the year, they are at least utilising wind power. However, Brazil has apparently made plans to transform their 2014 World Cup venues into "solar stadiums". Planners are even citing the Stade de Suisse as a "successful model".

Relevant articles:

Green infrastructure | Green buildings | Solar power projects in Italy | How solar power has saved Malta €7 million

Timon Singh

Timon Singh is a graduate of Liverpool University where he received a degree in Social and Economic History. He has previously worked for BBC Magazines on BBC Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, the publication for the popular genealogy show.

Like this article? Get the RSS feed: