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Wind power blow

21/ 3/2008

A PLAN to power Manchester City's football stadium entirely by wind energy has been put on hold - and it may have to be scrapped altogether.

Experts say there's a risk of ice forming on the 360ft high turbine blades and falling on to people or cars underneath.

European health and safety legislation says that there must be an exclusion zone around the turbine because of the potential threat to people and property.

But City bosses say this would mean declaring a huge chunk of match day car parking and the stadium's existing TV and radio broadcast compound out of bounds.

As a result City may have to find a new place for the wind turbine and if built will be one of the tallest in western Europe.

But a source says the club is prepared to scrap the plans unless the issue is resolved by the start of June.

Manchester City Football Club spokesman Pete Bradshaw said the European directive demanding an exclusion zone only came to light in November.

Mr Bradshaw said: "There's no proof anywhere that ice does fall off them - it's never happened, but there is this legislation that suggests it happens, and therefore we have to take that into the risk assessment.

"We don't want ice falling off onto people, or vehicles or anything else.

"The bottom line really is that if that is not resolvable then we may well have to come to the conclusion that a wind turbine is not feasible on this site any longer."

The project was given planning permission in 2006 and it was supposed to be up and running by last October.

Dale Vince, managing director of Ecotricity, the company who will own and build the project, said: "The project is still going ahead, we have been undertaking extensive studies into the possibilities of icing of the turbine blades and the mitigation measures that are available.

"We're number crunching on the probabilities, using long term data from the met office.

"The studies are simply precautionary."

Click on the video window for Channel M's report ...