The UK Government has announced a new grant for Solar PV for Farms.
Having Solar PV on Farms is something that has been controversial in recent months – but this is not to take up farmland as its exclusively for rooftops and irrigation reservoirs.
The grant for Solar PV for farms is available from this month. Its part of the Improving Farm Productivity Grant Round 2.
The minimum grant you can apply for is £15,000 (25% of a project value of £60,000). The maximum grant is £100,000 per applicant business.
We think the funds allocated for this will go quickly and so an early application is recommended. Amelio Solar Energy is prepared to with applicants to help in the application process.
What the grant is for:
- solar PV panels
- solar batteries
- inverters
- utility meters
- electrical grid connections
- power diverters
Solar PV panels can only be installed on:
- farm building rooftops
- irrigation reservoirs
Applications:
As with all grants by the Rural Payments Agency, there is a strict process to follow which will take some time to go through and ensure its correct. Amelio Solar Energy has extensive experience of working on farms and other commercial properties. We have helped many organisations obtain grant funding.
Obviously farms that use large amounts of electricity will gain the most. Cold stores are particularly large users of electricity and often have trapezoidal steel sheets roofs which are particularly well suited to installing Solar PV. We have installed on a number of potato farms for example. Livestock farms can also benefit – poultry and pigs in particular where there are ventilated sheds.
In such instances where the electricity usage is 24 hours a day, battery storage can come into its own. We can install large battery storage units where the surplus electricity stored during the day can be utilised at night. In addition, batteries can be used to draw power at cheap off peak times, discharging in the hours that are more expensive. They can also reduce electricity demand peaks in areas where the electricity network may be struggling to provide enough power – and there are plenty of these across Lincolnshire.
Whilst getting the right size Solar PV installation is, of course important, taking into account all appropriate safety measures. This is even more important with battery storage. This requires even more careful calculations to ensure batteries are of the correct size and will be set up and optimised to ensure the best value for money return.
Costs:
The cost of Solar PV is much reduced these days in comparison with the days of the Feed-in Tariff. Costs can be between £700 per kWp and £1,000 per kWp depending on the roof type with steel trapezoidal roof coverings being the most economical to fix to.
Obviously you still get what you pay for in terms of quality – both of equipment and of installation. We believe in the benefits of investing for the long term with inverters and products from SolarEdge which help generate power more efficiently as well as having many enhanced safety features.
for further advice please contact our team here. Alternatively call us on 01522 370 268.