A highland league football team is planning to become the first in Britain to have a stadium powered by the wind.
Deveronvale want to erect wind turbines on top of two of the four floodlights at their Princess Royal Park stadium and a feasibility study of the site has shown that two moderate sized turbines would not only power all of the floodlights in the ground, but also supply all the stadium's energy needs.
The club expects the turbines will be able to supply electricity to surrounding households and businesses. The estimated cost of the project is about £400,000 and most of that is expected to come from energy grants.
However, a Deveronvale official warned that the initiative was dependent on supermarket giant Tesco gaining planning permission to build a store next to the stadium.
The club said the move would release cash promised by Tesco for local community projects. Alan Still, a director of Deveronvale, said: "We want to put the turbines on top of the floodlight towers.
"We wouldn't have to make the towers much bigger because the turbines won't be the massive ones you see in the countryside.
"They would make us totally self-sufficient. There will probably be enough energy in reserve to pass on to homes and businesses in the area."
In a bid to keep costs down and safeguard its long-term future the club has decided to try to harness the wind. "But if the supermarket doesn't go ahead then it's likely nothing will go ahead," he added.
Local councillor John Cox does not think there will be any problems getting the turbines to turn. "People say there's a lot of hot air in the stadium on match days," he said.
"But we are fairly close to the sea so I don't think there's going to be any problem with wind. There's a lot of it around.
"We've got economic issues and social issues and we're trying to develop facilities that will keep the costs down.
"However, the scheme will bring benefits. It will lead to an economic regeneration in the area and it will be quite a unique selling point, especially in terms of tourism."
Deveronvale, who play in red and white, are named after the River Deveron which has its mouth at Banff.
The club was formed in 1938. Princess Royal Park has already been praised by the Scottish Executive for its unique transformation from a rickety old ground into a community stadium.
It is the base of the Princess Royal Sports and Community Trust which commissioned the feasibility study of wind power at the site. The study showed that the two turbines would provide 25% surplus power which would provide electricity to houses and businesses in the community.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article