Jim and the team at Belmont Farm asked us to install both a solar PV array and battery storage at one of their free-range hen houses in Cumbria.
Egg production is a twenty-four hour business. Ventilation, lighting, refrigeration and packing run around the clock, which changes the shape of the problem. A daytime-only generation profile is only half an answer when a meaningful part of your load sits outside daylight hours.
What went in
Three SolarEdge inverters, battery storage, and 74 SolarEdge optimisers across the array. The optimisers matter here: they let us see and manage performance panel by panel, which is worth having on a rural site where nobody is going to spot a fault from the ground.
The storage element takes generation that would otherwise have been exported at wholesale rates and holds it for the overnight load instead. On a site with continuous demand, that is the difference between a good return and a very good one.
The outcome
- 45.5 kWp system
- 64.5% of the electricity bill offset
- 4.8-year payback and a 22% internal rate of return
- £170,000 in lifetime bill savings
- 7 tonnes of CO2 saved each year, equivalent to around 320 trees
Wide open roofs, strong exposure, and energy used where it is produced. Agricultural buildings are often better suited to solar than the people working in them expect.
Thanks to Jim and the team, and to a notably content battalion of hens enjoying the clean fresh air of Cumbria.
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