Darwen Live goes green

Darwen Live organisers hope to make a big impression this year by leaving a smaller carbon footprint.

The two day festival, which will feature a whole range of talented local musicians will boast Europe’s only fully solar powered stage.

The 24 ft stage will be used to showcase the borough’s youth bands at the event that runs from Sunday, May 24 to Monday, May 25.

Blackburn born Tony Fleming originally from Mill Hill is the brains behind the eco stage, which has solar charged batteries ready to back up its power if heaven forbid the sun isn’t shining.

Tony, 48, who now lives in Cornwall with his wife Tracey and their family has been living a green lifestyle for over a decade.

Before the likes of Kevin McCloud came along with his Grand Designs the couple were running a household on and promoting renewable energy.

“We got into renewable energy at Glastonbury in 1994 after we bought our first panels second hand from the festival,” said Tony.

“We’ve never looked back.”

He now has a solar powered home, office and workshop and sells his surplus to the national grid.

“We’ve brought two kids up using renewable energy and started using it before it was main stream.”

“We got into it by necessity after we bought a piece of land in Cornwall and began living a green lifestyle.”

The dad of three who runs Southwest Solar Solutions came up with the idea for a solar powered stage after attending festivals and seeing that stages are normally powered by ‘noisy generators’.

Tony’s stage is towed by a truck, which runs on vegetable oil and hydrogen gas and is fitted with nine solar panels.

They generate enough electricity to run a pa system and lighting rig plus all the energy he needs for his living accommodation inside the truck.

Just under two kilowatts can be produced in peak sunlight.

“For the Darwen Live event they’ve got three stages so in theory we’re cutting their carbon emissions by a third,” added Tony.

“It gives a really good message out for Blackburn and Darwen that they’re doing something about carbon emissions.”