{"id":422981,"date":"2026-05-11T23:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T23:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/422981\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T23:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T23:23:08","slug":"renewable-energy-hub-planned-for-scottish-coal-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/422981\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewable energy hub planned for Scottish coal museum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The renewable energy hub is being created as part of a wider programme of investment on the site.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It includes plans to bring back into use the once steam-powered winding engine which has not been used for the past six years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It first operated in 1894 and was used to raise and lower workers, equipment and coal from the surface to the seam below.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The project will be used to train engineering students in mechanical skills which experts say are disappearing fast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Joanna John from design engineers Max Fordham said installing solar panels on historic structures is not an easy undertaking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She added: &#8220;On older buildings there might be materials that need to be dealt with appropriately or you might need a structural engineer involved to help ascertain whether that roof structure can hold the weight of the solar panels.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Because of the complexity involved, the most immediate priority will be to build the ground mounted solar-array first with the rooftop panels coming at a later stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The museum needs to raise \u00a3450,000 to allow the work to go ahead and has launched a crowd-funding appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The renewable energy hub is being created as part of a wider programme of investment on the site.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-422981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}