The Sunshine Coliseum
By Chris Davis | Wed Feb 3, 2010 09:17 PM ET Here’s an idea for a power plant: the solar-powered sports coliseum. What if you skinned an entire stadium with solar such that it could satisfy its own ginormous appetite for power when filled with spectators, but when idle (which is usually often) its solar panels could still be at work, making and feeding electricity to the grid? Sports facility as power plant. A colossal idea not likely to be done anytime soon; a rich fantasy beyond the pale. Except that it has been done, in Taiwan. Recently completed to host the 2009 Goodwill Games, the stadium will be able to supply all the juice for its 3,300 lights and two jumbotrons, or local residents when the lights and screens are off. Solar seldom makes the payback cut, but maybe it just sort of gets tucked into the mega-buck coliseum construction budget. Consider: the new Cowboys football stadium in Texas (which has no solar) seats 80,000 and cost 1,000,000,000. Taiwan’s stadium cost 182,000,000 and seats 50,000. Can’t say how the math works for these two stadiums on opposite ends of the planet, but in the 818,000,000 difference between the two, couldn’t you toss solar into the 1 billion do…
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