Anyone know how solar farm schemes work for land owners?

BuffetSlayer · 28 May 2017 at 15:47

Hi all.

As title really.

Im aware solar developers pay ground rent to land owners up to around £1k per year.

What I cant seem to find out is what revenue you would receive over and above that in terms of the generation. Seems like a low rent for a year without any additional benefits.......?

cookiem0nster · 28 May 2017 at 20:40

Would depend on the size of the potential solar farm, whether or not it has planning permission already. Plus numerous other factors.

I work in the industry, but if your looking to lease land for a large commercial project 5% of a projects revenue would be a good target for a landowner to try and achieve.

BuffetSlayer · 29 May 2017 at 09:35

OK - thanks for the information.

So it would be up to £1k per acre per annum + circa 5% of revenue per annum?

Dont suppose you know what a typical 1 acre solar array produces per annum in revenue terms?

I have been to website after website and cant seem to find any answers other than standard FAQ. It all seems orientated to much larger systems.

It also concerns me that the government trend is to constantly cut FiT rates so it seems a risky proposition given the 25yr lifespan of the system unless the developers offer fixed rates, but that seems unlikely to me.

cookiem0nster · 29 May 2017 at 20:57

A 1 acre site would be 0.25MW at most so maybe 300MWh of output per year, which depending on the tech might attract about £60/MWh (incentives have dried up considerably for solar).

You've missed the boat as things stand to make any money out of leasing the land to third party developer and the size of the land wouldn't make much sense unless there was a grid connection readily available. But if you were able to wire the park into nearby business you might be able to make a little out of it.

FiT rates have been cut considerably as there has a been a big uptake of the technology as developers rush to meet the deadlines and hence the government things the country is well supplied in terms of solar for the time being. The cost of the tech is coming down at the same time which is helping to soften the blow. We're starting to see opportunities to build projects which don't rely on the FiT or RO schemes to be economical. These are big sites though and the power would be 'bought' by big corporates who are looking to fix in power prices over a medium term.

wilber · 30 May 2017 at 10:18

From what I have gathered it's not worth it unless you have a massive site, and/or you can use the majority of the power yourself. Connection costs are staggering unless you have a 3 phase power line right next to your site. Before any of that, you should find out if the local electric line has capacity for the project, quite a few areas dont.

Psycho Sonny · 30 May 2017 at 12:40

the time wasted looking into this project. you would have been better off planting something on the land no doubt.

BuffetSlayer · 31 May 2017 at 19:16

Thanks for the informative replies guys. Much appreciated.

Kind of cemented my already considerable doubts.

I think the bin is the best place for this notion!

FISHGUTS · 1 Jun 2017 at 20:56

I'm sitting on a 250kw planning permission, which isn't worth taking forward.
Commercial battery storage is the in thing at the moment.