A six-acre solar farm is now powering milk production at Berkeley Farm Dairy, in a move expected to cut energy bills by almost £88,000 a year and significantly reduce the site’s carbon footprint.
The family-run dairy in Wroughton, Wiltshire, has switched on a ground-mounted solar PV system capable of generating more than 642,400 kWh of electricity annually, which is the equivalent of saving around 136,410kg of carbon each year. The installation, located in a field separate from the farm’s grazing Guernsey herd, is designed to shield the business from volatile energy prices while supporting long-term sustainability.
The investment follows the spike in electricity costs in 2022, which prompted the Gosling family to accelerate plans for on-site renewable generation. Already operating electric delivery vans, supplying organic milk in reusable glass bottles and maintaining permanent pasture to help offset methane emissions from their 150 Guernsey cows, the dairy processes around 250,000 litres of milk each week, which is an energy-intensive operation.
The system was installed by South West-based renewable energy firm SolarSense, whose team carried out site surveys, system design and full installation.
Farmer and senior partner Ed Gosling, whose family has produced Guernsey milk on the site since 1908, said: “We’re growing all the time, selling to shops and restaurants as well as directly to individual customers.
“We used all the electricity the panels generated in its first month, but as daylight hours get longer and we have excess, we are reviewing our ways of working to see how we can best use it.
“For example, we use a lot of energy for cooling and are now looking at pre-cooling 10,000 litres of water during the day using solar-generated electricity and then using that water for cooling milk at night when solar energy production is low but work in the processing unit continues.”
Russell Mees, managing director at SolarSense, said: “Berkeley Farm Dairy is demonstrating how on-site solar generation can deliver real benefits via a single investment, while strengthening their ESG and sustainability credentials.”
For Gosling, the only disappointment was the switch-on itself. He said: “That was a bit of an anti-climax.
“It wasn’t like switching on the Christmas lights which is what we’d all imagined. It was more a formal notification to say our panels were now active and producing energy. But we were incredibly happy the installation is up and running and we are really excited about the difference this will make to the future of the farm.”
Ed added: “We are expecting payback on the investment in year seven and savings across the 25-year lifetime of the solar panels of some £3.2 million.”
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