Hell Yeah! NASCAR Goes Solar at Pocono Raceway

In June, Dan pointed out some of the coolest sports stadiums around the world using solar power. You’re probably not surprised to see solar panels on facilities in places like San Francisco, Tokyo, and Nuremberg… they’re hot locations for green technology. You probably wouldn’t have guessed the latest entry into the club, though: the Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.

That’s right… solar meets NASCAR in Pennsylvania. Nothing quite as radical as solar-powered race cars — there will still be plenty of engine noise and fuel fumes during events — but the venue’s owners didn’t just make token gesture, either. The 25-acre solar array replaces a parking lot, and, at full production, will generate 3-4 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year. That’s enough to power the Raceway completely plus feed a ton of energy back to the grid… and to make the Pocono Raceway solar farm the largest at any sports facility in the world.

If you’re having a hard time wrapping your head around this, you’re not alone —  hard to imagine a sport supported by fans who love to wave Rebel flags and shout “Hell, yeah!” a lot seeing “going green” as a promotional vehicle. But this isn’t a case of simply jumping on a PR bandwagon: CEO John “Doc” Mattioli saw this as a no-brainer in terms of energy costs, and has been playing with the idea for five years. He told CNN

Several hundred thousand dollars a year is what our electric bill is… We’re spending almost $16 million to put this project in. We’re not going to have an electric bill anymore, and we’ll also be benefiting the grid when we’re not drawing power and supplying energy to the grid that will go to our neighbors’ homes … almost close to a thousand homes with this project.

And, no doubt, they’re generating revenue from that energy going back to the grid… so, even with a big initial investment, the track should see a reasonable payback period… and only maintenance costs afterwards. That’s enough to get a “Hell, yeah!” out of the most controlled corporate executive.

And this is only the latest green initiative from the track: last year saw the addition of more recycling bins in grandstands and suite areas, and tree-planting as a part of the NASCAR Green Clean Air initiative.

Enough to get some diehard granola-eaters out to the races? We’ll see…

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg is the founder of environmental blog sustainablog, which now features the Green Choices green products comparison engine. We’ve got a full array of solar products, from grid tie solar systems to sun-powered Citizen Eco Drive watches.

Image credits: Vasiliy Meshko at Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license & Mike Weston at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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