900 Hectares in north east Scotland to solar panels

[Humble Village Farmer]

I think we should be putting more solar panels on sheds/houses/factory roofs etc before farmland, and maybe doing more micro hydro too as well before taking good productive land out of production.

B0llocks to good productive farmland if it doesn't pay the bills.

People seem happier to pay for electric than a proper price for food.

 

[The Agrarian]

Good. Way too much straw and grain produced in the UK.
Way too much gas bought from the Russkies.

And you sell straw and grain.

 

[DrWazzock]

Why is it really anybody else’s business? Landowner’s choice as to what he or she does with their own assets. It might not please others but why do others feel so entitled to an opinion? The landowner maintains and needs an income from the land. I don’t go round the village telling people their livelihoods are unethical or displease me, so it’s always griped me that they somehow feel entitled to have a say in my business, especially when I’ve done probably a much better job of keeping it aesthetic than any of those would have done.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Why is it really anybody else’s business? Landowner’s choice as to what he or she does with their own assets. It might not please others but why do others feel so entitled to an opinion? The landowner maintains and needs an income from the land. I don’t go round the village telling people their livelihoods are unethical or displease me, so it’s always griped me that they somehow feel entitled to have a say in my business, especially when I’ve done probably a much better job of keeping it aesthetic than any of those would have done.

actually very good point

 

[7610 super q]

And you sell straw and grain.

Quite happy to put solar panels on my land, if it's wanted.

 

[steveR]

I don't see the problem at all personally. If the Blenheim Estate solar farm goes ahead, it will 1000ha which will produce at peak output all of Oxfordshire's household electricity needs. That seems a tiny area for that output. Imagine how many acres of maize the biggest AD plants are taking (think tens of thousands of acres...) to produce a tiny amount of that output. Even better if every gap between the solar panels can be rewilded, it will keep loads of people happy. But let's start with the least productive land. That said, arable land is always going to win as its going to be flatter and easily accessible.

Edit: Drax power station covers an area of 1000ha too...

Great for keeping sheep under them too. I wish I had the nerve to lamb under them here....

With some thought and agreement at build time, the sheep keeping could be made even better. Sites split into useful paddocks, handling system for each paddock.

 

[BRB John]

Always look on the bright side eh?

There's nearly 20 hours daylight up there in the summer.

Which just so happens to be when electricity demand is at its lowest .

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Great for keeping sheep under them too.

With some thjought and agreemnent at build time, the sheep keeping could be made even better. Sites split into useful paddocks, handling system for each paddock.

Good point, or even a central handling system which they would have to go through each time they moved.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Which just so happens to be when electricity demand is at its lowest .

The biggest problem with solar, I suppose it is getting easier to store it

 

[BRB John]

The biggest problem with solar, I suppose it is getting easier to store it

Indeed battery tech is advancing rapidly.
But even in the depths of winter a 3kw solar panels would still produce 3kwh which should be more than enough to get the house through peak demand hours between 4pm and 8pm. If they had a 5kwh battery.

 

[MrNoo]

12kw of solar here with 10kw storage, it pretty much runs my house off grid at the moment, 3 dull days and I'm back on mains at night. It rained all day here yesterday and I produced 303w!! But today I had charged the batteries (from almost flat) to full by 10-30am.
Huge spat on Twitter about It with Charles Annan, tenanted land and landlord wants to put it to solar, grade 3 but grows 10t/ha wheat. They seem to want to rid solar from being built on Grade 3 which is a nonsense and as said above it is actually owned by the landowner. A tenant friend of mine lost his whole farm as his landlord got permission for houses on all of it. He did get a pay off but it does belong to the landlord at the end of the day.
I'm all for it, farming isn't fun anymore, money comes and goes, always the middle men and end producer coining it in off our hard work, not aided by constant negativity against farming in general. NFU, Red Tractor, there's more to life so why not have a sensible income if its offered.

 

[Landrover]

If someone came to me and said they wanted to put the whole farm down to solar I would take it, as long as I could graze underneath them and keep the land as agricultural! Some of the rents that are getting offered make a joke of trying to farm

 

[DrWazzock]

For large scale solar, one of the major constraints is proximity to the grid. So land near existing or more particularly recently redundant fossil fuel stations is favoured. So it’s a compromise. Round here the land near the old coal stations in the Trent valley is fairly good agricultural land but the benefit of being close to high capacity grid probably outweighs this. It’s never straightforward.
Out here in rod sticks with 60 year old 11 kv rural network it’s virtually impossible to get a decent sized grid connection so small scale island mode is more likely.

 

[BRB John]

It's a bit miss leading as well saying 900ha are going down as solar when it's actually 15 separate sites spread about across a huge area.

 

[Bald Rick]

Giant solar farms out in space is the future

Esa mulls Solaris plan to beam solar energy from space

The European Space Agency considers a plan to collect solar energy in orbit and beam it to Earth.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[BRB John]

Giant solar farms out in space is the future

Esa mulls Solaris plan to beam solar energy from space

The European Space Agency considers a plan to collect solar energy in orbit and beam it to Earth.

www.bbc.co.uk

Nothing screams vulnerable infrastructure like a giant fragile solar array in space....

 

[DaveGrohl]

Giant solar farms out in space is the future

Esa mulls Solaris plan to beam solar energy from space

The European Space Agency considers a plan to collect solar energy in orbit and beam it to Earth.

www.bbc.co.uk

Saw that on the news earlier. My immediate thought was have they not actually seen Gravity?

 

[DaveGrohl]

Which just so happens to be when electricity demand is at its lowest .

When it's hot everyone needs air con. They simply mist have it. Bit ironic that solar can increase warming while everyone thinks it’s the answer to climate change. But it’s a virtual circle; solar makes it warmer so more air con is needed so more solar is built so more air con is needed so……..

The Photovoltaic Heat Island Effect: Larger solar power plants increase local temperatures - Scientific Reports

While photovoltaic (PV) renewable energy production has surged, concerns remain about whether or not PV power plants induce a “heat island” (PVHI) effect, much like the increase in ambient temperatures relative to wildlands generates an Urban Heat Island effect in cities. Transitions to PV...

www.nature.com

 

[MrNoo]

No worse than house building, in fact I would say much better than.

 

[goldeneagle]

All new builds, that is both housing and commercial, plus new builds on farms should have to have solar, or what? built in the design from new, if you take the amount of new buildings built per year that soon adds up, plus if it was designed into the building, buildings from new and built into it as the buildings are constructed it would cost alot less?

Planning is making people have to install solar or some sort of green technology in Scotland as part of sustainability initiative/requirement. Certainly in Aberdeenshire most of the new houses i have seen have solar installed.
Speak with people with new houses in England and that doesn't seem to be case, that could be because planning obtained years in advance and not having to comply with most recent requirements though which Barrats etc are very good at.

I built new house in 2020 and solar panels put 5k onto price which was a godsend now with the way prices for electricity and installs has went.