Solar powered farming

We've had a long-standing interest in renewables on our farm – we have a woodchip boiler, a 6KW wind turbine, and solar thermal installed. Our latest addition has been solar PV on our barn roof. We genuinely feel responsible for looking carefully at our carbon balance, but we’re also very aware of how a farm set-up like ours could easily become unviable if we had a big rise in energy bills.

In March this year we installed an array of Solarcentury photovoltaic panels measuring 8m x 1.5m in total on a south-facing barn roof. We reckon the 2.96kW (peak) system is expected to produce 3000 units (kWh) over the year, and our location in sunny southern Cornwall helps.

We spent £10,000 on the panels plus installation and fitting them on a slate barn roof was fairly straightforward. Although it is a listed building, there was no problem getting listed building consent from the planners. Connecting to the grid was straightforward too.

We reckon the panels should produce about £1500-worth of electricity each year, made up of a generation tariff, plus power exported to the grid and savings made by using home-produced power instead of paying an energy company for it. We’ve already produced 1317 kWh since the panels were installed earlier this year and are looking at a payback period of about seven years. This is considerably shorter than it would have been before the Feed-in Tariffs were brought in.

Energy production will be lower in winter, of course, but the stronger winter winds mean the 6kW turbine will produce more power at that time of the year to help compensate. One technology can never offer everything, but our renewable energies complement each other and work well as a mix. It means we're completely free of energy costs – and we have an extra income.

Stephen Frankel specialises in producing meat from high-husbandry rare breeds on his farm Carhart Mill near Wadebridge, Cornwall – pork from Large Black pigs, beef from Dexters and meat from West Country Geese.

Watch Solarcentury’s films about the basics of solar PV, or the Feed-in Tariffs. For answers to frequently asked questions about solar, see their guide.

Send us your experiences or questions about solar PV and we’ll get them answered by an expert. Email us.