Solar Farm letters

pembsarable

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Pembrokeshire
There may be interest from the sewage treatment plant owners. Welsh Water have installed solar panels at many of their sites if there is spare land as part of their green targets. It may be worth while an email offering your site and making the suggestion. If you are next door, could be a private direct supply from your field to their plant.
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Out of interest why do these solar firms not buy the land only rent it? At the rents suggested it would more than cover the mortgage over 25 years?
its the way the industry is structured. The developer only finds and builds the farm then sells this on to a long term investor, generally with a maintenance contract
 

MrNoo

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Cirencester
Also you have to remember that the developer has to "develop" building a solar farm is not cheap, so buying land plus shelling out for hardware would be quite a chunky outlay.
Rent is actually their cheapest outgoing, rates will be generally more than the rent
 

pembsarable

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Pembrokeshire
Not quite sure about the long term investor side of things. The solar park with us has had 3 owners in 5 years. I've lost track of the number of different "finance houses" that have actually put up the capital for it all. They always seem to be re financing - I suppose chasing additional margin on cheaper / different sources of funding. It would be a whole lot more complicated if they owned the land rather than leased. The other point to think about , really its a case of pass the toxic parcel..... which company gets left with the clear up and disposal costs. The cynic in me expects in the latter years the business to go pop leaving the land owner to foot the bill.....
 
Not quite sure about the long term investor side of things. The solar park with us has had 3 owners in 5 years. I've lost track of the number of different "finance houses" that have actually put up the capital for it all. They always seem to be re financing - I suppose chasing additional margin on cheaper / different sources of funding. It would be a whole lot more complicated if they owned the land rather than leased. The other point to think about , really its a case of pass the toxic parcel..... which company gets left with the clear up and disposal costs. The cynic in me expects in the latter years the business to go pop leaving the land owner to foot the bill.....

The full decommissioning cost is caluculated up front using examples from Germany and Spain in particular. It’s then index linked for the duration of the contract and that money is then put into an escrow account held by solicitors. If you don’t get that don’t do the deal.
 
I'm getting quite a few letters at the minute asking for me to sign a grid mandate to allow a third party to speak to the DNO about a connection. They say it's not an agreement to work with them and doesn't tie me to anything. But I'm inherently sceptical.

Talking about £850/acre, but subject to grid. They say initially feasibility study is done entirely at their own cost.

Do say they need 25MW minimum project. Is there any disadvantage to letting them speak to DNO on my behalf, as it might be something we would be interested in, in the future. But I don't want to be trapped or have a commitment.

In the days of tariffs and by the time the life of the solar panels are fully accounted for so after initial deal ends but then panels run on for further period you will be over £5000/acre/year income averaged over the entire period.
The value of the land to sell the freehold also increases considerably.

Today without tariffs things are very different indeed. I’m not sure it’s worth it to be honest.
 

MrNoo

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Cirencester
Today without tariffs things are very different indeed. I’m not sure it’s worth it to be honest.

It all hinges on where the elec is sold, how it is sold, a lot of these sub free sites that are just occurring on line mostly have PPA deals with industry, local Gov, Councils etc. It's actually very interesting seeing what deals they put together. There is one quite forward thinking Council up North that has got into this in quite a big way, cost savings on their elec bill is huge, hence it stacks up for them to get involved. Others seem to be following.
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
It all hinges on where the elec is sold, how it is sold, a lot of these sub free sites that are just occurring on line mostly have PPA deals with industry, local Gov, Councils etc. It's actually very interesting seeing what deals they put together. There is one quite forward thinking Council up North that has got into this in quite a big way, cost savings on their elec bill is huge, hence it stacks up for them to get involved. Others seem to be following.
I think that council scheme you are talking about is actually in desperate trouble. The people who set it up had no knowledge of the energy market and it is wasting money like water in a sieve.
unless you can use the power directly, there is just no way an array will work today without subsidy, or is on a very large scale using very cheap money.
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Warrington, think they have 2 farms now, recently completed York one and another in Hull.
sorry , that is not the ones I was thinking of.
The Hull scheme claims to be meeting all the councils needs, as though they are not selling all the energy into the grid then buying it back.
This of course is not the case, unless they owned all the local network then they cannot be using their own power.

These schemes work, since the councils have been able to borrow money at ridiculously low rates long term, often well under 1%.
This is of course fine, as long as they have tied it up for the life of the scheme .
Though I would suspect the maintenance scheme is a bit of a sweetheart deal.

some local authorities got into schemes selling power to locals not realising that the energy market is not straight forward. Thinking that the inflation rate in energy prices would continue for a long time invested in generating power without having the knowledge . When Energy prices did not go up the schemes became unviable and they had to pump money in.
Birmingham had a classic example.
 

MrNoo

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Cirencester
Bit more about it here, our's was to be based on the York model by all accounts.
 
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This is ours 28 acres owned by LightsourceBP. One of the last small projects. Plenty of issues and things we wish were sorted at the time.
 
What were the main issues?
The main issue is the company owning the solar are not he same as the main contractor - these people used a company and they did everything on the cheap. Fencing not completed to our standards, dreadfully dug drainage ditches, Didnt agree access coded gate. Gates between fields not installed. Reinstatement not great. Hedgeplanting poor and not maintained (it is being actioned now). Rubbish and plastic left in ground.

One of the issues is the size of the field and too big for a flock of sheep - obv you cant split them. Gathering sheep is not easy a lot of banging heads! Maintaining the grounds is also not easy and the grass isnt the best - it needs a fresh lay in some.

Its a bit of a change in lifestyle to have contractors turning up - things like access when youve just blocked off the yard when managing the cows. There are advantages of having people around as in stock control (they usually report a sick sheep) plus the advantage of security.

Its a fact that we did chose rightly, the option came about and there was no other options available, this financially is a winner as no inputs. It does take out options of fields though and rotation is much more difficult. Def dont regret it.
 
Location
East Mids
One of the issues is the size of the field and too big for a flock of sheep - obv you cant split them. Gathering sheep is not easy a lot of banging heads! Maintaining the grounds is also not easy and the grass isnt the best - it needs a fresh lay in some.

Its a bit of a change in lifestyle to have contractors turning up - things like access when youve just blocked off the yard when managing the cows. There are advantages of having people around as in stock control (they usually report a sick sheep) plus the advantage of security.

Thanks. I must admit I had always suspected it was harder than people assumed to run sheep around the panels - looking for cast sheep, dead ones etc a lot harder than in a clean field!

We have had dealings with major third party projects before - Environment Agency Flood defence, Severn Trent pipeline and a forthcoming bypass - so I know what you mean about contractors and all the others - surveyors etc.
 

snarling bee

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Bedfordshire
Not quite sure about the long term investor side of things. The solar park with us has had 3 owners in 5 years. I've lost track of the number of different "finance houses" that have actually put up the capital for it all. They always seem to be re financing - I suppose chasing additional margin on cheaper / different sources of funding. It would be a whole lot more complicated if they owned the land rather than leased. The other point to think about , really its a case of pass the toxic parcel..... which company gets left with the clear up and disposal costs. The cynic in me expects in the latter years the business to go pop leaving the land owner to foot the bill.....
On the other hand you will own a solar park, which with a bit of maintenance will still be generating electricity. I can't see that extending the planning will be difficult. Or it is brown field development. Or you might be able to extend the lease. In many of our cases it will be the kids problem anyway!!
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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