MONMOUTHSHIRE County Council (MCC) are to vote on Thursday (30th July) to secure financial approval for the construction of a 5MW solar farm on 25 acres of authority owned land at Oak Grove Farm, Crick.

This is the equivalent of providing electricity for approximately 4,000 homes and saves 2,395 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year. It is also more than four times the capacity of all renewable energy technologies installed by the authority to date.

They estimate that, if approved, a gross income of between £9.8m and £12.1m over 20 years will produce a net income of between £1.2m and £3.5m over 20 years, equivalent to an average net income of between £60,000 and £177,000 p.a.

MCC aims to maximise the value of the council’s land holdings by identifying new areas of revenue that do not impact on provision of front line services.

Oak Grove Farm was considered the most suitable site based on the various planning considerations. The site is not within a protected landscape and lies outside of the nearest designation being the Historic Landscape.

This site was chosen as the fields were determined to be reasonably well hidden in respect of the vistas/visual impacts from neighbouring land, other property and the highway.

While the existing tenant will retain limited use of the grazing land within the curtilage of the solar farm, an amended tenancy agreement will provide him with an increased holding size to compensate for the effective loss of land, replacing the existing lifetime tenancy with a fixed term 16 year farm business tenancy.

While the landscape character of the site itself will change significantly, it is considered that the overall effect on the surrounding landscape will not be significant. The arrays will be effectively temporary structures; the site could revert to its original landscape state at the end of the operational life of the development. In order to reduce visibility further the existing boundary and internal hedgerows are all to be retained and promoted where necessary, and supplementary hedgerow planting will take place on the eastern boundary of the development site.

The council aims to maximise the value of the council’s land holdings by identifying new areas of revenue that do not impact on provision of front line services; the Estates team has now installed PV systems on roofs where it is financially prudent to do so.

The proposal includes further costs for procuring a project management service with a proven track record in successfully delivering solar farm projects to manage the procurement, construction and accreditation of the solar farm, and to monitor and evaluate operation in the first year.

An expenditure of £5,000 p.a. has been built into the business case to establish a fund for local community projects, totalling £100,000 over the 20-year project. The fund will be available six months from completion of the solar farm, once the system is generating and the first generation payments have been received.