Lantern Club goes Green with Solar Power

You may not see it next time you walk into Lantern Club, but we have become much greener as we are now the first club in Mingara Leisure Group to be have solar panels.
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The 100 Kw system installed by Todea Solar harnesses the sun’s energy using 400 solar panels mounted on the roof of the club. This will not only reduce energy bills by $19,000 per year, it can save about 122 tonnes of carbon emissions per annum as well.
“The Lantern Club installed solar panels as a commitment reducing our environmental footprint,” said Lantern Club General Manager Debbie Waicokacola.
“We are very proud of reducing the carbon emissions, this saving is equal to planting 1240 trees & removing 28 cars off the road for a year.
“We are always looking for green sustainable initiatives and solar has become more viable. We will potentially be installing these at our other sites (Mingara and Westport clubs).”
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Five fun facts about Solar Energy

  • The sun is 90 million miles (144.8 million kilometres) from the earth, but it takes less than 10 minutes for light to travel from that much of distance.
  • The earth constantly gets 174 Petawatts (that is 174,000,000,000,000,000 Watts!) of solar radiation in the upper atmosphere however 30% is reflected back to space while the rest is absorbed by oceans, clouds and land masses.
  • The largest solar power plant in the world is located in the Mojave Desert in California, covering 1000 acres.
  • Solar energy has actually been used for over 2700 years. In 700 BC, glass lenses were used to make fire by magnifying the sun’s rays.
  • If we add the amount of solar energy that is absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere, land and oceans every year, we end up with approximately 3,850,000 Exajoules (that is 3,850,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kilojoules). This is equal to 8000 times the total consumption of the whole world per year.

© Lantern Club, Roselands