PV farms.

[Tinbum]

I'm all for PV but just found out about this one local to me. Some of these are just going way to far in my opinion. 3000 acres of agricultural land!

https://www.boom-power.co.uk/east-yorks ... -launched/

https://www.boom-power.co.uk/wp-content ... 2500px.png

[Mr Gus]

It's 10 years behind the design curve, & likely that councils have no idea about modern offerings & integration, which they ought!
All that acreage gone.

Mind you, if they stuck it on rooftops on the massive acres of fields now crap box estate housing...

[Tinbum]

Exactly- but I dont think this even goes to the council it's that big it's the secretary of state.

[Andy]

But haven't they said they will continue to graze sheep underneath? Well I suppose specifically they will explore it. It should be a requirement to be sized such that they can.

[Tinbum]

I can't see that happening, it's all arable round here. Just a ploy to get through planning.

Aren't we supposed to be all going vegan anyway!

[Mr Gus]

I hate to say it (because I think sheep as livestock, lamb & mutton are grossly undervalued) so whilst cattle have always been able to graze under solar (if you mount it high enough) bi-facial & the ability to grow AND graze needs utilising wherever possible otherwise it is just shutting down land for the foreseeable, with possible redesignation at the end of a solar farms life, plus over the acreage of "boompower" (who are they & are they UK based or offshore)? If they are using loads of concrete in favour of screw pilings then it's a big amount on that 3000 ?? acre scale.

Not being low slung ground mount can add 40-60% on costs, & delaying returns (the investors aren't doing this to be green, more calculated business opportunity)

The car park being covered with solar at cost of millions is small fry by comparison, but architecturally it has to withstand "twats in cars" ..the increased elevation adding a lot to the project, ..that car park won't be free much longer despite being very empty (Arse end of the Cambridge busway) ..planning means that the empty car park offers weather protection, but little to none to those embarking / departing.

Mind you stagecoach have just decimated bus services here, so that adds another layer of intrigue as to the out of town bus point to cambridge.

Back on topic, I linked to a massive Canadian solar farm some months ago, that is an interesting comparison (Alberta, not showing up on Google maps at the time, but interesting scale & use of materials comparison)

[Oldgreybeard]

Arguably, putting solar panels on land is a more efficient use of it than growing crops or fattening cattle or sheep on it, in terms of useful kWh per hectare. Grazing animals are the very least efficient, plants aren't great (even specially bred biomass crops) and solar comes out on top by a large margin, IF, getting useful energy from land is the only consideration.

When ground PV is associated with any form of compatible grazing, then the efficient use of the land increases markedly.

There are also very large tracts of land in the UK that we can't do much with in terms of growing crops or grazing animals. Not all land can be productive, so unless it's a landscape worth protecting because of its appearance or for reasons associated with biodiversity etc, then it may as well have solar panels on it.

[Tinbum]

We'd better cover the whole country then and rely on the rest of the world to feed us. Perhaps Russia would supply us with all the grain not going to be grown on these fields.

The land round here is very productive, it's the east Coast of England.

We have loads of industrial roofs that could be covered with PV.

[Oldgreybeard]

We'd better cover the whole country then and rely on the rest of the world to feed us. Perhaps Russia would supply us with all the grain not going to be grown on these fields.

The land round here is very productive, it the east Coast of England.

We have loads of industrial roofs that could be covered with PV.

Obviously there needs to be a balance, and I agree that roofs are a better bet, but we live in a place where people are free to do pretty much what they like with their land. Leaving aside the moral issues, if I were a farmer and someone offered me a deal that paid me more money per hectare than I could make from any viable farming operation on the land, then I'm going to accept that offer.

If we want to switch that equation around, so that farmers are better off growing crops and grazing animals then food needs to get more expensive, so farmers make more money by producing it. Food is too cheap, so cheap that there are other things the owners of land can do with it to make more money from it.

Having fine moral values is commendable, but as my uncle (a farmer) was very fond of saying about new initiatives for this or that, "Fine words butter no parsnips". What he meant was that it would be great to bring back old hedgerows, with their biodiversity, but unless someone was going to compensate him for the loss of income by doing so, then it wasn't going to happen. Same goes with PV, if it's more profitable then it gets installed in preference to growing stuff.

[Tinbum]

Part of the problem is that the land owners round here have run ruff-shot over the locals.

First it was so called composting- the smells were awful, so much so that on occasions we nearly booked into a hotel. They only did it for the money and didn't do it well. You really couldn't describe the smells. We still get them but not so often. They will probably say the land isn't productive because it's been contaminated!! A field near us has been- when they did the survey for the carbon capture pipeline they thought their instruments were faulty and had to test them in an adjacent field. Environmental health did eventually prosecute after a raid with 30 officers but it was dropped but that's another unbelievable story. Part of that field now has planning to be a holiday park- that will be very interesting when the holiday makers complain of the smells.

Next it was wind turbines. The actually village of Spaldington would have actually have been within the farms if the Land owners got their way. I like wind turbines but you can't totally surround a village with them.

Now they are looking to put the village within a solar farm.