Friday July 7th 2023
A college which created Scotland’s first solar meadow is to add a new solar array onto its roof to reduce its carbon footprint even further.
Edinburgh College’s Midlothian campus has been granted planning permission to install nearly 500 solar panels at its Eskbank campus.
The college, which launched its solar meadow a decade ago, said the panels will cover more than 900 square metres of roof with 464 individual panels and support its ‘target of achieving net zero carbon’ as well as assisting with its ‘decarbonising agenda’.
Midlothian planners said the roof panels would be located in a built up area and and would not interfere with natural or historic environment sites or create noise.
They said they looked at the existing solar meadow when considering the new application to consider the cumulative effect of adding more panels.
However officers said: “The ground-mounted solar array makes provision to limit its visual impacts through bunds and ground modelling.
“There is little opportunity within the local area whereby both developments would be experienced visually at the same time.
“This is limited to the rail station access road running in between the ground mounted solar panels and the site.
“Even here, the cumulative visual impact is very limited due to the screening of the ground-mounted panels and the height of the proposed roof mounted panels.”
No objections to the proposed new solar array were lodged and it was approved by officers.
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