Solar panels get €1,000/acre so what’s the catch?

Kerry2021

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121797326#Comment_121797326

My SO works in the renewables industry and apparently offshore wind turbines are the next big thing. They’ll create massive amount of energy, won’t really be in anyone’s way and I was told they won’t require much maintenance.

I agree with you that it’s a shame that such good land is put into solar farms.

I recently read the average Canadian dairy farm has 96 cows, they make 225,000 Canadian dollars per year on average which is €150,000. In Canada they get very harsh winters which means they’ve to have absolutely top notch farm buildings which cost a lot of money obviously. My point is that shouldn’t Irish dairy farmers surely be able to make €1,000 profit per cow in an average year given that we’ve got one of the very best climates in the world for dairy farming.

I think people only go into solar farming because they get sick of working for nothing

roosterman71

Offshore wind is indeed the in thing, but it's as yet uncosted. There's a plan for 37GW of it off the coast, 50% of which is earmarked for hydrogen production. The price of building these things isn't known and Eamon Ryan gave a ballpark €100 billion just to erect them. Doesn't include maintenance (and it's at sea, there'll be costly maintenance [there's lots of maintenance on land based turbines]), doesn't include the infrastructure to get the power to land, doesn't include the grid updates, and doesn't include anything to do with hydrogen (facilities, maintenance again, storage, etc).

Irish dairy would make that money if Irish farmers were paid right

Victor

Take a look here: https://openinframap.org/#9.43/53.4079/-6.441/P,S - the red / orange areas (not dots) are solar farms.

This is something I have been following loosely. The price offered will vary and will typically have little to do with the farming value of the land.

The typical arrangement is that a power company (there are now many of them), through a subsidiary, will enter into an arrangement with a land owner and bid for a connection to the grid. Suitable land (physically suitable, but also planning permission, access, etc.) for solar and an easy connection to the grid are the most important aspects. Somewhere next to a factory with large demand will do much better than somewhere west of Dingle. One issue with some substations is that they have constant demand, but nobody is generating power locally, so there is plenty of supply capacity. North facing panels are at a disadvantage, but north facing sites are not necessarily a no-no, depending on slope. The bigger the solar farm, the more that certain costs can be shared.

The power company will design a solar farm and apply for planning permission. Often, this will be a 10-year permission (instead of the normal 5-year), which means the project can be constructed at any time 10-years after the planning permission was received.

The planning permission will be to have the solar farm there for 25-40 years, which will be equal to the number of years for which the solar farm has a contract to be connected to the power grid. After that, things will need to be decide. Is there demand for the energy? How much is maintenance and repair? Does the money stack up? I can see many leases being renewed. Backing out part-way through the lease in unlikely to be an option.

Each power company will probably offer different terms and conditions. These T&Cs will be as important as the headline price offered for the land. It would be important to get proper advice. Some will offer you X per area of land. Others will offer Y per kWh sold. Other will offer a %.

If the power company goes bust, I can see a bidding war for the assets – most of the costs have been paid and there is still lots of income to happen.

Depending on the solar panel design, sheep grazing or similar light-medium use might be possible. Cattle are probably a no-no. Grass and arable might be impractical.

Cables are invariably buried to avoid damage and the access roads no more intrusive than other farm access roads. The power company may even upgrade some of your farm roads.

Nobody is saying that you have to go 100% into solar.

Ideally, battery stations should be located right at the substation. There are three main types of battery station. Some can power a whole town for several hours in the event of a power cut, but the main intention is to cover occasional blips in the system – they can react in milliseconds. Others are purely commercial - the idea is that they buy power cheap off-peak and sell at on-peak at a higher price. Wind and solar farms may have batteries to use when directing the wind turbine / solar panel in the right direction – this means they don’t need to buy power back from the grid to do this. Battery stations are relatively small in size, some well under a hectare.

In some places, it may make sense for groups of landowners to come together and ask the power companies to bid against each other. The farming organisations should really be doing work on this - to agree standard contracts, inform farmers, and offer advice. The organisations will need to tread a careful line between individual groups of farmers cooperating and a farm organisation engaging in monopolistic behaviour.

It would be important to get proper legal and tax advice. I’m not sure that forming a company is the way to go. Note that certain businesses can get similar inter-generational tax reliefs to farming. Indexing of values could be based on the CPI, the cost of capital goods (solar panels) of the cost of electricity.

Banks and investments funds are interested in sustainable energy as they put them together is ‘green energy’ funds. This means there is a market for solar farms and the companies involved.

Bazzer007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121800181#Comment_121800181

Regarding battery stations, according to the Farmers Journal, farmers adjacent substations are being offered 20k to 25k per acre. Some money. Renewable companies looking to option 4 to 6 acres.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121822954#Comment_121822954

A neighbour here is reported to have gotten €10m for a site for 5 gas fuelled generators and 250 shipping container sized batteries.

Another company has also aquired 400 acres for solar panels beside it.

Also the gas line is 10 kilometres from here so farmers will be getting money for that crossing their land too

Alot of money to be coming into an area too

Bazzer007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121831762#Comment_121831762

Unreal money. What part of the country is that project taking place?

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121835292#Comment_121835292

Westmeath

Kerry2021

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121831762#Comment_121831762

A person would buy a lot of land with €10mn…!

I suppose it basically comes down to luck to be presented with such an opportunity?

Victor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837320#Comment_121837320

Not quite. More a matter of geography - is the site next to an existing underused grid connection.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837377#Comment_121837377

There's a high power line on steel masts going through our farms, I think they're connecting to those

Water John

Bigger projects would be connecting into 110kv, which is the national grid. Medium into 38kv, 20kv and 10kv which is the localised distribution network.

gym_imposter

It's peculiar to me that the solar companies don't try and offer to buy the land off the farmers instead of paying well in excess of a grand per acre for decades ?

50HX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121863461#Comment_121863461

It's a massive capital investment to purchase land

It will also tell you that should solar go south in the morning they can up sticks & walk away

gym_imposter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121863486#Comment_121863486

True,I'm not suggesting that the purchase price should be €1000 X 35 per acre but if they offered €20 K per acre, they'd save significant on a full thirty five year term lease

Never going to be anything more than a minority but surprised it never happens all the same

Victor

For them, if they bought the land, it would mean almost all their expenditure would be upfront. All that would be left would be security, maintenance and admin.

Dickie10

why are they pushing to get land under solar and why is it so hard to get roof space covered and get 1,000 euro for an acre of that?

gym_imposter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121863565#Comment_121863565

Yeah , it's just not the done thing

Victor

"why are they pushing to get land under solar" - the power companies are doing it to make money.

"why is it so hard to get roof space covered and get 1,000 euro for an acre of that?" - there aren't many 100-acre roofs. Economies of scale are important.

pureza

1500 an acre widely offered now in Wicklow and Wexford by one of the large JV operations

That's the equivalent of a minimum of €900 an acre after tax or €45k into your hand p.a index linked for 30 to 35 years

It's a serious offering

Kerry2021

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121873555#Comment_121873555

€1,500/acre is great money to be fair. If 6 neighbours had 60-80 acres each of poor land and if they’re only running beef cattle on it making no money then I think it’s something that they’d be right to take up. Those people would most likely already have off farm jobs that take up most of their time. I don’t think many if any dairy farmers could bear to see their land covered in solar panels and see the cows go etc

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121864417#Comment_121864417

You actually get a lot more per acre of roof space, the difference is the costs are upfront

Back on page 1 of the thread I worked out that €1k/acre is something like 0.2c/kWh generated

Considering the FIT is hovering around 18-20c/kWh, that's a pretty poor slice of the investment pie

Now I guess to answer the question of why you couldn't just rent out your roof at a fixed rate, as others have said scale is important. The installation costs on 100 houses would likely be greater than an acre of land, and you can't just connect the whole lot into the grid, it's 100 NC6 connections

There have been companies in the US that did this, but you had to sign up to their electricity rates which often weren't great

Rooftop solar is generally better for self consumption, and in that regard it's excellent. Speaking from experience, my bills are down from €211 per month to €24, and that's including all of my heating and driving

But the flip side is you have to pay upfront for all the savings so there is a payback period. People go a bit mad about the payback period, and while it is important, it shouldn't discourage people

After all homeowners don't question the expense of an extension or a new kitchen despite the fact that they never pay for themselves

One thing that really bothers me is the measly 3-4 panels you see on new houses just to comply with the building regs. They really should be covering any roof space that isn't north facing in panels nowadays. It would make a big difference to the power consumption and energy bills of the new homeowners

dmakc

around 15ac was bought near me by a solar company for €10,000/ac, company did it privately with seller so auction was cancelled. This land literally adjoining the substation in the area. No planning yet, was the seller fleeced? Just compared to some of the quotes here.

Finest of grassland. Ideal even. Inheritance sale

Say my name

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191579#Comment_122191579

Seller was robbed. Could easily have tripled that figure. And that would be just for ag purposes.

There's getting to be pushback in the UK on any more ag land being covered in panels. Solar companies here would know that too.

Kerry2021

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191579#Comment_122191579

Sounds like a very bad deal. My SO was telling me we aren’t too far off seeing €2,000/acre being offered for guys that lease their farms out for solar arms. At that money there’ll be a lot of them going up

Bazzer007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191579#Comment_122191579

That land was bought for battery storage. Solar farms are only viable if hundreds of acres will be planted. The seller could have got 10k an acre per year. That's commercial land now.

dmakc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191817#Comment_122191817

10k/acre per year? Am I reading this right? How is it such a goldmine

Bazzer007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191832#Comment_122191832

Energy companies are signing options with farmers for lands neighbouring substations. Most looking to lease but if they can buy for 10k per acre they'd get it back in the morning if planning wasn't granted. For the farmer, half would go on tax but still a great income at that kind of money.

tabby aspreme

Has planning been given for a battery farm yet

Water John

Land next to substation could be used for battery storage but the number of acres needed would be small. Any 5Mw solar farm requiring 25 acres is viable.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192088#Comment_122192088

In general or specifically?

There's multiple battery farms have been installed over the past few years

https://www.energy-storage.news/electricity-supply-board-opens-irelands-largest-battery-storage-facility-at-dublin-energy-hub/

In terms of land, the batteries that are installed are optimised for grid balancing. So they supply a lot of power for a short time, typically 1-2 hours

That doesn't sound like much, but remember the peak demand is from around 5-9pm, so batteries enable more of that to be covered by renewables and less from very inefficient open cycle gas turbines

I imagine land near a substation is valued a lot higher since you can install a much larger grid connection for less costs, which suits a battery installation

tabby aspreme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192356#Comment_122192356

Specifically on a Greenfield site, as there seemed to be more objections to battery farms than solar farms

roosterman71

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191579#Comment_122191579

They must have been desperate for money to agree to that

Victor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191817#Comment_122191817

If you've read the thread, you should have realised that the economic viability of these installations is primarily down to proximity to market (direct customer or substation), not land area.

celtic_oz

Amazed that the Irish Government is not a bit more far sighted and place substations etc out in the west where land is poor.

Wind resources are excelent there and the solar farms would balance calm days and take advantage of cheap land because of poor soil.

Using the best arable land in Dublin and Meath seem to me to be a bit short sighted.

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192717#Comment_122192717

That would mean building infrastructure and power lines

We don’t do much of the first and the later be bogged down (ha) in objections for decades

Hell just look at the trouble building north south connection on this island

K.G.

One thing that's rarely mentioned is the national grid and the eirgrid s ability to manage the fluctuation s.i see with our own little solar project that it's production jumps and falls dramatically during the day which i can't imagine would be easy to manage on a large scale

tabby aspreme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192745#Comment_122192745

That's why battery storage is essential for solar to work

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121863461#Comment_121863461

Lease is opex, purchase is capex. This is the difference. Keeping it as opex is much more taxation friendly.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192745#Comment_122192745

If your usage is 240kwh per day, with a fairly flat demand curve averaging 10kW, with a spike to 15kW during some daytime and a drop to 5kW a couple of night hours, the issue of solar fluctuation only occurs if you expect to cover a significant amount of use with solar.

In the above example lets say your solar input on a max day is 4kW but usually 2-3kW during summer and 1-1.5kW in the winter. You never touch the actual demand, so the base generation is always running. You only run into issues if you have to start turning off and on gas (or even worse, coal fired) power stations

Victor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192717#Comment_122192717

Speculatively building substations is a waste of money and resources that could be better used elsewhere.

While power plant developers have to fund their sites and connections, the wind and solar isn't taxed (constitutionally, the state owns all forms of potential power), so developers and landowner are getting a nice subsidy there.

dmakc

What's the general success rate of these planning applications for solar farms? I imagine objections are raised, does it halt things or do they eventually get through?

K.G.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192761#Comment_122192761

I have been told that standbye generation fossil fuels is more cost effective than batteries storage for managing power consumption

Bazzer007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192598#Comment_122192598

You'd want to read the thread yourself again lad. The land sold is adjacent a substation as stated by Dmakc. Energy companies need direct access to the substation as required by Eirgrid. These companies have to purchase at least one acre and lease as much as they deem necessary.

Waterjohn small solar farms dont seem be viable anymore. The ones I see going for planning have 200+ acres optioned. Maybe 5 years ago that day has passed.

have2flushtwice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120531190#Comment_120531190

Having seen both types Installed, I'd rather have to pull out 40 acres of panels than 5 turbines.

Cran

had them here about 2 months ago with a solid offer, 1200 an acre and 2% increase annually. I told them they were miles off with the numbers & risk involved. Land around here makes 20k, easily get 500 an acre tax free and inflation over 35 years is about 4.5%. They weren’t impressed with my response and argued the numbers, found it all a bit arrogant tbh

Kerry2021

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196772#Comment_122196772

2.5% annual increases is an absolute joke. They’d end up having it for half nothing for the final 10 years. Look at how money has devalued in past 5 years even

I just calculated that 2.5% compounded over 30 years means the rent money would only double over the 30 years. Look at the price of everything 30 years ago versus 2024. You’d buy a fine house in 1994 what you’d pay for a second hand car today

Water John

Unless you're really clued in, I wouldn't begin to negotiate with any co. Get a professional in the area to act on your behalf and I don't mean a local solr or auctioneer.

Ubbquittious

To generate 1000e worth of electricity a year you only need 10 or 12 panels.

These solar conpanies are absolutely milking it. They dont even feel the 1000 they are paying to rent the land

Good loser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196772#Comment_122196772

That was a very good offer. I expect I would have taken it. Maybe the annual increase could be linked to CPI or CPI plus 1%.

The toll roads work on a CPI basis, I believe. That 500 per acre won't last and might be hard collected.

Even with the panels there would be grazing of sheep allowed.

pureza

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197448#Comment_122197448

Thats all fine and dandy but being offered a certainty vs an uncertainty has a value

Bar the blip caused by the Russian War,inflation has been very low

How much money do you want?

200 acres at 1200 is 240000

You keep 60% ,so you earn €144000

You can put €100 k of that on a demand deposit these days at 4% and you're getting a 2% inflation rise aswell ?

They wont be back I'd say

It's a silly thing to let them go imho