The Lemon Fool

JohnB wrote: but I assume the landowners expect panels+sheep+less manpower is more economic than high-input crops.

Have you not just put up a very strong argument that climate change is a myth and it's all about profit and subsidies ? Personally, I don't know..

Midsmartin wrote:Sheep can graze under solar panels, but of course most of the sunlight no longer reaches the grass, so there's much less food.

There’s a bit less food. But the sheep also cut the grass and keep weeds from growing up and onto the panels. In areas which are difficult for machines and staff to access. So they are a double benefit.

Gryff

gryffron wrote:There’s a bit less food. But the sheep also cut the grass and keep weeds from growing up and onto the panels. In areas which are difficult for machines and staff to access. So they are a double benefit.

I suspect you don't realise quite how much less food we're talking about. Good arable land can produce 7000kg of usable wheat flour per hectare, a hectare of rough upland might support 1 sheep yielding 20kg of usable meat. Even if the good land can support a couple of sheep, you're still looking at maybe 50x as much usable food per hectare from keeping it as wheat.

These debates can appear from the outside like simple NIMBYism, but really it's a more strategic argument about keeping the best farmland under the plough. Most people don't realise just how rare good farmland is - it's something like 6% of England that's classified as Grade 1, and a lot of that is concentrated in a small strip of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, with odd bits in Norfolk, North Kent etc - real Tory heartlands, and it's no coincidence that this debate flared under Liz Truss, a Norfolk MP. I'm sure that on the rubber chicken (rubber turkey in Norfolk?) circuit she was bombarded by farmers who think it's a big strategic mistake to take the "best and most versatile" (BMV) land out of production. In theory any non-agricultural development that takes out more than 20 hectares of BMV land has to be referred to Natural England, but there's a feeling among rural Tories that system doesn't work particularly well. Of course, Truss ignored the real problem and concluded that if BMV appeals helped NIMBYs, then redefining BMV to include even "moderate" land would mean more appeals and make L. Truss more popular among rural NIMBYs.

This is a CPRE overview of BMV planning issues, obviously they're more worried about housebuilding, but page 24 in particular is notable - almost as much BMV land was lost to development in 2022 as in the previous decade, this is a sharply increasing problem.
https://www.cpre.org.uk/wp-content/uplo ... curity.pdf

scotview wrote:

JohnB wrote: but I assume the landowners expect panels+sheep+less manpower is more economic than high-input crops.

Have you not just put up a very strong argument that climate change is a myth and it's all about profit and subsidies ? Personally, I don't know..

They're not getting subsidies for these kind of farm-scale solar projects. If they're choosing to enter CfDs then the last strike price was £46/MWh which means they would be paying "negative subsidies" to the government even before the invasion of Ukraine, at the moment the negative subsidy is over 80% of the wholesale price.

So yes it's all about making a profit (and why not?) but it's just because the economics work because the cost of these projects has fallen so much.

The solar output maps are diagonally striped across the UK, with the best performance in the SW, and indeed there are solar farms planned there, where the traditional farming technique is livestock, but they are smaller, with the biggest one planned for Cornwall described here being 54 hectares, 17 MW. The size might reflect land ownership differences between counties, I always think of Lincolnshire arable farms being much bigger than Devon dairy ones.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornw ... ms-8035899

Certainly I don't like arable land going out of production, and while I can see that much marginal land is not suitable, this often on aesthetic grounds than economic grounds. Moorland seems a better choice, but a Google suggests there are only a few of them proposed, like a 7MW? one in Staffordshire

https://www.repd.co.uk/projects/totmonslow-solar-farm

The wording there suggests that the local council have declared a "climate emergency" for political reasons, and that makes it much harder to refuse these schemes on planning grounds. As always many environmental schemes have their economic arguments distorted by political and emotive ones.

Windfarm on steroids!

"Wind Catching Systems has been awarded the grant to support the initial implementation of a full-scale Windcatcher.

"The technology is expected to cut acreage use by more than 80 per cent and increase efficiency significantly in comparison to conventional floating offshore wind farms."

"One Wind Catching unit is expected to have the same annual production as five conventional 15 MW offshore wind turbines."

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/02/06 ... e-funding/

Now the birdies will have no chance.

Ok so urbandreamer asked...
I live in Lincolnshire, and have several friends who are farmers. At least one I have spoken to has already seriously considered turning his land into a solar farm.

The big attraction of solar to them seems to be it is decent profit with no effort or risk (to the farmer, developers simply rent the land).

Yes, you can make more planting crops BUT there is risk of prices moving, risk of bad weather, risk of disease, risk of infestation. You have to employ workers and buy/rent expensive machinery to collect it. Vegetable crops need even more manpower, which they can't currently find even if they could afford it. Fertiliser prices are astronomical, and the govt are banning many pesticides increasing farmers' risk of a big loss.

To the country as a whole, food may be more important. But to individual landowners, a safe regular income for no effort looks very appealing.

BTW: The thing that would kill this development stone dead is if they reclassified the land use from agricultural to industrial, removing the IHT exemption. But I suspect the sheep may be sufficient to keep that. Another benefit of the sheep?

Gryff

AS the OP, I mentioned that I live in Lincolnshire and on the local news last night there was a report of another huge (10,000 acres, 15+ sq miles) solar farm proposed near to Gainsborough. Rather than farmers being in favour, it was clear that there are some who object to the prospect of their land being compulsorily purchased thus destroying the family farm/business. One farmer said that the wheat grown on the acreage that was proposed to be taken from his farm (just a small part of the total) could supply every 15 million loaves a year - enough for every household in Hull for a year. This gives an idea of the scale of the loss of food production involved.
Going back to my original question, wind turbines on a perhaps a quarter of the area would produce as much electricity, potentially 24 hours a day, and allow farming to continue on much of the land used.

Nocton wrote:Going back to my original question, wind turbines on a perhaps a quarter of the area would produce as much electricity, potentially 24 hours a day, and allow farming to continue on much of the land used.

It has already been answered. Wind turbines to produce the same power would require 6x the land area. Individual turbines have to be well separated to avoid turbulence - BUT - would allow farming (or solar panels) to occupy much of the area between.

Q: Can you grow wheat under turbines or would the wind deflected downwards flatten it? I've never seen turbines in wheat fields. They tend to be on poorly irrigated hilltops.

Rural solar is now THE cheapest form of energy. Even cheaper than onshore wind. And also, the land can be returned to agricultural use very quickly. When we get the Fusion plant maybe? https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news ... re-7672455. No, I won't hold my breath.

Gryff

The 6X factor is wrong and I think must be referring to hilly sites.
"Q: Can you grow wheat under turbines or would the wind deflected downwards flatten it? I've never seen turbines in wheat fields. They tend to be on poorly irrigated hilltops."
Just come to south Lincolnshire and you can see arable fields with standard crops like wheat growing under them. See for example:
https://www.edf-re.uk/our-sites/?view=& ... nd#gallery

gryffron wrote:It has already been answered. Wind turbines to produce the same power would require 6x the land area. Individual turbines have to be well separated to avoid turbulence - BUT - would allow farming (or solar panels) to occupy much of the area between.

Gryff

I've never worked out why they don't put solar and wind in the same location. They have to put the construction, access, and cabling infrastructure in to take the power away, so surely that is quite a chunk of the cost.

Paul

Tedx wrote:How Solar Panels Are Changing Agriculture - Agrivoltaics Revisited

How Solar Panels Are Changing Agriculture - Agrivoltaics Revisited. Visit the SPAN website to get a quote and start the process of having SPAN in your home https://link.undecidedmf.com/span2. Experiments in agrivoltaics (solar panels plus farming) have had some really promising results over the last year, like using new technology (luminescent solar concentrators) to double food production and implementing AI systems to better harvest sunlight … but is getting twice the use per acre really a win-win for sustainable farming and renewable energy?

https://youtu.be/ww-_U7_oQbY

Luminiscent solar concentrators look interesting, I'd never heard of them before. A brief overview:

https://prepp.in/news/e-492-luminescent-solar-concentrators-lsc-environment-notes

RC

ReformedCharacter wrote:

Tedx wrote:How Solar Panels Are Changing Agriculture - Agrivoltaics Revisited

How Solar Panels Are Changing Agriculture - Agrivoltaics Revisited. Visit the SPAN website to get a quote and start the process of having SPAN in your home https://link.undecidedmf.com/span2. Experiments in agrivoltaics (solar panels plus farming) have had some really promising results over the last year, like using new technology (luminescent solar concentrators) to double food production and implementing AI systems to better harvest sunlight … but is getting twice the use per acre really a win-win for sustainable farming and renewable energy?

https://youtu.be/ww-_U7_oQbY

Luminiscent solar concentrators look interesting, I'd never heard of them before. A brief overview:

https://prepp.in/news/e-492-luminescent-solar-concentrators-lsc-environment-notes

RC

I cant find it now, but I recall about ten years ago reading about MIT working On window glass replacement solar concentrators. They took the suns ray's and pushed it to the edges when it generated electricity.

Search greensfornuclear.energy/physical-footprint-comparison/

Hi see the link above this gives a good indication of what you are asking. We are also fighting GNR solar which if built will surround alot of villages and will be the biggest in europe, 7000 acres 1.2 - 1.5 million solar panels.

Birdy1970w wrote:Search greensfornuclear.energy/physical-footprint-comparison/

Hi see the link above this gives a good indication of what you are asking. We are also fighting GNR solar which if built will surround alot of villages and will be the biggest in europe, 7000 acres 1.2 - 1.5 million solar panels.

All very well, but last time I checked you couldn't graze sheep under a nuclear reactor, and as I'm 57 Hinkley is probably the only new reactor that will come online during my lifetime. A shame really as half the issues aren't technological.

Urbandreamer wrote:Another thing to consider is that solar is nowhere near as good in Scotland as England. Something to do with the earth being a globe and Scotland being further north.

Solar PV cells work based on light and not with the heat of the sun; hence it hardly matters if it is cold, cloudy or foggy.
Scotland gets a similar amount of irradiance to Germany, which has the largest PV market in the world.

In the summertime the sun can stay up until after 10pm though in the winter it can disappear at 4pm so the issue is about generating supply at times when it isn't needed.

Lanark wrote:

Urbandreamer wrote:Another thing to consider is that solar is nowhere near as good in Scotland as England. Something to do with the earth being a globe and Scotland being further north.

Solar PV cells work based on light and not with the heat of the sun; hence it hardly matters if it is cold, cloudy or foggy.
Scotland gets a similar amount of irradiance to Germany, which has the largest PV market in the world.

In the summertime the sun can stay up until after 10pm though in the winter it can disappear at 4pm so the issue is about generating supply at times when it isn't needed.

Try looking at a MAP!
Germany is the same latitude as ENGLAND. Scotland is further north than both.

I tried a search to find if other factors than latitude could make Scotland more suitable for PV, but strangely couldn't find much. Possibly you could provide your source that claims that Scotland gets the same average irradiance as Germany.

Here is an irradiance calculator that may help.
https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/pro ... insolation

Lanark wrote:Solar PV cells work based on light and not with the heat of the sun; hence it hardly matters if it is cold, cloudy or foggy.

Cold makes no difference, the other 2 a massive one. You need bright direct uninterruptes sunlightto get a decent output.

Lanark wrote:Scotland gets a similar amount of irradiance to Germany, which has the largest PV market in the world.

In the summertime the sun can stay up until after 10pm though in the winter it can disappear at 4pm so the issue is about generating supply at times when it isn't needed.

The incidental angle of the sun also makes quite a difference. The further North you go the lower the angle of the sun, markedly so away from the midsummer.

A friend in Perth gets similar total output to me in summer apparently (looking at August last year) but since then has lagged. He's catching up now, but even with his longer daylight it seems the hours of bright direct sunlight are not really any longer and his incidental angle is lower than ours.
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/shrewsbury lets you play with locations, even with our largely East facing array output declines dramatically an hour or so before daylight ends as the sun drops.

Maybe he needs a steeper roof.

Paul