Bishop Auckland Football Club

Bishop Auckland Football Club is a community sports venue, and its main grandstand offered exactly what a solar array wants: a large, open, unshaded roof over a building that draws power the year round.

G Smith fitted a 75 kWp array across that grandstand roof. It generates around 72,000 kWh a year — electricity that goes straight into running the club and takes a meaningful bite out of the energy bills a busy venue carries. On those figures the system pays for itself in about six years.

For a community organisation, that six-year payback is the part that makes it work: once the system has covered its cost, the generation keeps offsetting running costs for the rest of its life — money that can go back into the club rather than out to an energy supplier.

It is a textbook example of where rooftop solar earns its place: a big, simple roof, a building that genuinely uses electricity, and an owner who benefits from every unit generated on site.

Community sports grounds are exactly the sort of owner that benefits most from generating their own power: the building is used week in, week out, the club holds it for the long term, and every unit made on the roof is one the club does not have to buy. On a grandstand — a long, simple, elevated roof — the panels sit cleanly, out of the way of everything happening below.