The first solar farm under the Irish government’s Small-Scale Renewable Energy Support Scheme (SRESS) has been energized in County Cork. SRESS supports projects that produce between 50 kW and 6 MW of electricity.
The 650 kW Meadhill Solar farm was developed by Cork farmer Sean Keating and provides space for sheep grazing around and underneath the solar panels.
The project generates sufficient energy to power around 150 homes in the area and provides a revenue stream for Keating, who began work on it in 2017. The farmer has entered into a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Flogas, a DCC Energy-owned company that is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Flogas is actively seeking other farmers, landowners and small enterprises interested in exploring PPAs. Ken O’Byrne, managing director, Flogas told pv magazine he sees plenty of opportunities for further PPAs under the SRESS, adding that there is a lot of capacity yet to be allocated to facilities under the scheme.
“The major benefits to farmers and communities in our opinion is to diversify revenue streams while making a positive carbon reduction impact to the national electricity grid,” O’Byrne said, pointing out that Keating’s flagship Meadhill Solar Farm project demonstrates to farmers what is achievable even on a small parcel of land.
“We think this is the beginning of a wave of small-scale energy projects being developed by farmers and communities. Significant solar deployment is occurring at domestic rooftop scale and at major utility scale. Farmer or community led projects are the scale in between these and now have the opportunity to follow suit and benefit from strong supply chains, proven solar technology and in an unobtrusive way to their farms and communities with relatively small but impactful solar installations. Farmers have been harvesting solar via crops for millennia, this is simply a new medium to harvest solar energy: via PV technology,” said the Flogas head.
Irish company PV Generation Ltd. (PVGEN) took on the installation tasks and assisted Keating throughout the development phase. Edward Carbery, the company’s group marketing lead, told pv magazine that it has been involved since the very early stages and part-funded the project.
“The planning permission and grid connection was already obtained by the client before PVGEN came on board, but we completed lots of design iterations at the pricing stage and supplied the client with production models to bring to the banks to apply for funding,” said Carbery.
PVGEN completed the electrical installation, commissioning and testing of more than 1,000 panels at the site and arranged for testing on the ground conditions, as well as for the mounting array to be designed and procured from Turkey. It also liaised with the Irish distribution systems operator to ensure the design complied with the grid connection agreement and provided the EGIP protection panel and the LV distribution board.
Like O’Byrne from Flogas, Carbery said PVGEN is seeing a lot of interest in microgeneration solar from farmers and landowners. “People are starting to see this as a good opportunity to diversify their income. We would definitely say that there has especially been a bigger interest in farmers exploring all kinds of solar projects as a result of the energy crisis and the recent jump in electricity and diesel prices.”
Besides the SRESS, the Irish government supports renewable energy generation through solar PV grants, for roof top solar on farm buildings, as part of the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme (TAMS).
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