Foothills County council has decided to look further into putting solar panels on the roof of the Scott Seaman Sports Rink.

The issue was brought before last week's council meeting.

"Council had a number of questions regarding the engineering piece, whether the Scott Seaman's roof could handle the weight of all these panels as well we wanted more information on how many megawatts it would produce and any recycling piece that we could find, it's certainly a concern for myself and the council as a whole," said Reeve Delilah Miller.

She says it was a close vote, but they did add some conditions like putting aside money for future recycling, since there's nowhere the panels can be recycled now in Alberta, or in Canada.

They also want more details about the strength of the roof considering they're looking at putting a thousand of the panels there.

"We do have concerns on the structural load on the building so we'll need to investigate that and then our energy manager will bring that back to council for further decision if there's some cost to renovating," Miller says. "We're not so keen on doing any type of renovation to support the solar panel load so that's an important piece."

She says the weight load may affect the number of panels they can use and that could impact the potential cost savings.

They should know in a couple of weeks what they're looking at.

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