COVERING GOOD FOOD GROWING LAND WITH SOLAR PANELS?

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
The objections on here seem to be ones of policy, not nimby.
Fundamentally solar farms are lazy; it's just too easy compared to doing the far, far more sensible thing of insisting all new roofs have them on.

That's because they have been "briefed" on what constitutes a legitimate planning objection. They know not to say "I think it's ugly and will make my house price go down". Local know it all will have produced a template letter.
 

delilah

Member
That's because they have been "briefed" on what constitutes a legitimate planning objection. They know not to say "I think it's ugly and will make my house price go down". Local know it all will have produced a template letter.

I mean the posters on here, not the nimbys being quoted on here. I for one have no view of a solar farm nor have been 'threatened' by one.
I treat nimbys with the disdain they deserve. Our community was threatened with a major development a few years ago, I laughed in the face of any of the overnight environmentalists who assumed I would join them in their crusade.
 
A 25acre park would be 5MW (nowadays probably 6.25MW) which would produce less than 5,000 MWhr pa. at say £40MWhr that is £200,000 pa which per acre is £8000 pa. If you've borrowed £120,000 per acre to build it then it doesn't look that clever, after annual costs, which are significant.
We looked at building a 5MW park, but if interest rates went up to nearer 10% it didn't look very attractive, and if over 10% you would probably loose everything. (assuming you borrowed 100%).
Early parks like ours were for 25years, not the 40years that they are on about now, and we are already 5 years into that.

The secret is if you don’t build yourself to limit the lease to half it’s life. Lots of people did that.

You can build, including the planning, connection charges etc for £170k/acre. Return is £600k/ac without index linking or elec price increases.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
What grows under them ? Surely a certain square inch of land can only be hit by the ray of sunshine once, it's either hitting a solar panel or the earth ? Genuine question not being funny, never seen a solar farm in the flesh. We have a couple of roof systems, one making 12v the other into the grid, they both on roofs.
I agree with the OP they should be illegal on farmland. Windmills I like.

A surprising amount of low input grass I have found.

I have 20ac of land with 5meg of panels on some VERY wet, low lying PP land. (Grade 3/4) There is around 2ha RPA mapped with no panels around the perimeter and inside, so a reasonable spot of sheep grazing through the summer. The land was always 6 month max grazing for cattle. So crap in fact, that teh Ag board decided it was not fit to plough in 1942!!!

The grass under the panels is like that under trees, it grows well, but is not keenly eaten... initially. Ran 50 odd EC ewes last year from Jan to August, the 7th year since it was built, but could take a few more, however, the management is such that I do not want to be moving stock back and forth. In late July, we had another 30 EC ewes come as well for flushing. The whole lot go in Oct/Nov, then just a few left over lambs through the winter/

I am going to pop a spot of lime prills on the open areas this time as soon at dries up enough to improve the grazing areas. Maybe eve a tickle of N.

Before it was buil;t, I spoke with one farmer with a solar farm who had the arrays of modules far enough apart to get a small tractor down, and made hay!! Here, they are too close for harvesting, but might look at a compact for some N applications one day :)
 

Wisconsonian

Member
Trade
I would totally agree all new roofs should have them except the north facing.
The problem is that roofs are more expensive than bare land, and when the roof needs maintenance down the road, all the money paid back by the panels will be spent taking them off, and then you start over putting them back up?

Far simpler and cheaper to design a blank slate that will function for 30-40 years or whatever and not have to worry about the foundation too much.

I've seen Tesla's solar shingles advertised, still seems way too much money. There needs to be a large tempered glass panel roofing system to make sense for rooftop solar. I haven't seen that yet. It might end up too ugly to be acceptable also.

You could say that requiring all south roofs to be solar would spur the creation of such a system. But it might turn a lot of people off solar before it works out.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
I do believe that Peterborough council built solar farms on some of their small holdings , which I understood were grade 1. That is a crime I think

Irresponsible.. Local authority here did the same, it seemed like easier money than renting it out or developing it. Inside gossip, is that it has not been a massive success, at least initially.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
I’m not far from this, I think the general objection here is that the panels will
Surround a few villages. The land is grade 3 Sandy land.

Our local council invested £14 million buying a ready made solar farm. The land was fairly rough I think, and certainly never worth millions! I heard it was the chairman of the councils mate who bought the land and put them up🤔

What a surprise... :confused:
 

Poorbuthappy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
The problem is that roofs are more expensive than bare land, and when the roof needs maintenance down the road, all the money paid back by the panels will be spent taking them off, and then you start over putting them back up?

Far simpler and cheaper to design a blank slate that will function for 30-40 years or whatever and not have to worry about the foundation too much.

I've seen Tesla's solar shingles advertised, still seems way too much money. There needs to be a large tempered glass panel roofing system to make sense for rooftop solar. I haven't seen that yet. It might end up too ugly to be acceptable also.

You could say that requiring all south roofs to be solar would spur the creation of such a system. But it might turn a lot of people off solar before it works out.

There's various options.
Waiting on some pricing for a small array here.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
putting on roofs is all well and good if the grid can cope. most of the time it cant which is why SF’s tend to be clustered along grid lines.
.

one in planning near here thats been a grass farm for the last 100 years yet CPRE bang on about loss of food production etc. Sheep love solar farms, it gives them so much shelter, as do grey partridge

A local Councillor attempted to build into policy that all new build factories should have panels fitted, but it came unstuck very quickly as the DNO would not want to be dealing with a mass of differerent owners etc, and also the issues of grid capacity as you poinyt out.

You are right, the wildlife AND the sheep love the panels. I would love to be able to lamb in there, but checking them would be a nightmare :)
 
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farmerman

Member
Location
Leicestershire
Can’t fault solar , no diffrent to growing corn except you harvest sun not corn. good luck look after your self and family first .

involved in a bigish development 2 1.2million sq/ft distribution sheds , and one of the planning conctrate is they need to be easterly facing to enable the whole roofs to be covered with solar panels, end users and developers are all keen to boost green credentials.

I think it will become compulsory to attach panels or a form of Renewable engery onto all big developments in the next 5 - 10 years.
 
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Scrambler

Member
Location
Leicestershire
The secret is if you don’t build yourself to limit the lease to half it’s life. Lots of people did that.

You can build, including the planning, connection charges etc for £170k/acre. Return is £600k/ac without index linking or elec price increases.
snarling bee said a return of £8000/ac and you say £600k/ac. Even if your figure is the total return over the life of the panels, that would take 75 years.
Build costs + maintenance + removal/disposal costs must surly make it difficult to justify the diy option.
How do solar farms affect things like inheritance tax relief and business rates?
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
A 25acre park would be 5MW (nowadays probably 6.25MW) which would produce less than 5,000 MWhr pa. at say £40MWhr that is £200,000 pa which per acre is £8000 pa. If you've borrowed £120,000 per acre to build it then it doesn't look that clever, after annual costs, which are significant.
We looked at building a 5MW park, but if interest rates went up to nearer 10% it didn't look very attractive, and if over 10% you would probably loose everything. (assuming you borrowed 100%).
Early parks like ours were for 25years, not the 40years that they are on about now, and we are already 5 years into that.
The people who finance these things , currently have access to extremely cheap cash, where a margin of 1% is considered OK
Your figure of £40/ MWh is actually pretty poor, they would certainly be looking for a minimum of £55 and possibly £65. Which makes the figure very considerably better.
The returns did very briefly drop last year to £35 but thankfully are back up again.
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
snarling bee said a return of £8000/ac and you say £600k/ac. Even if your figure is the total return over the life of the panels, that would take 75 years.
Build costs + maintenance + removal/disposal costs must surly make it difficult to justify the diy option.
How do solar farms affect things like inheritance tax relief and business rates?
I think @warksfarmer ’s figure refer to some of the early system's with large FITs built in. These were grossly over compensated.
Aware of one site, the owner called me in for discussion as they were trying to reduce his rent, which was phenomenal in itself. When we calculated how much they were making it shocked him, needless to say the rent stayed. Let us say that it was very close to the value of the land, annually!
 
snarling bee said a return of £8000/ac and you say £600k/ac. Even if your figure is the total return over the life of the panels, that would take 75 years.
Build costs + maintenance + removal/disposal costs must surly make it difficult to justify the diy option.
How do solar farms affect things like inheritance tax relief and business rates?

So very very roughly subsidy income per acre per year is around £12,000. Elec sales varies obviously but around £10-12,000 per acre per year average. So very roughly £600k total without factoring in index linking and increase in elec sale price.

I’ve seen mentioned cost of infrastructure replacement mentioned. It’s peanuts. I know of a site that after 3 years had 10,000 panels replaced for something better.
 

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