Will it damage the environment?

Solar farms sit lightly on the landscape and managed well can give both farming and biodiversity wins.

First off during construction there are no huge concrete foundations or heavy earth moving. The panels are anchored in the ground via simple metal posts driven into the soil.

During operation the land remains productive and healthy. We plan to graze sheep within the main portion of the site. Studies have shown that sheep living among rows of solar panels rest more and appear to experience less heat stress; We will be using the margins of the site for wildflowers and pollinator friendly plants. Recent research from Lancaster University demonstrated that well-managed solar farms are in fact amazing for pollinators.

Each year we will set aside a restoration fund and when the project is over all of the equipment is easily removed and recycled and we return the site to it’s original state.

How much does it cost?

Costs for a solar farm can be broken down into a few blocks. Assuming you are starting from scratch (which we hope to avoid!)… first off you need to find a big enough space close to a piece of the electricity grid with “spare capacity”. That means somewhere relatively modern that won’t become overloaded on a really sunny day when you provide all this great clean electricity. Once you’ve found a site you need to agree an option to lease that land from the local landowner. Next you need to go through planning permission which will involve traffic, ecological and archaeological and other surveys to ensure the site is suitable (this might cost 20k to 200k). Next you need to agree a connection cost to the grid with ESB Networks (this might cost 500k to multiple millions - we’ll come back to this in the risk section). Now you need to agree a buyer for the electricity once it’s being produced and ensure the price you can negotiated x the amount you’ll produce will pay off your costs and give a reasonable return. If everything adds up you’ll lease the land (aprox. 1k per acre per year) and bring in a specialist contractor to build the solar farm (aprox. 1m per MW). You’ll also need to bring on a contractor who provides support and maintenance for the site for its 20 or so year lifetime.

How much space does a solar farm need?

When we talk about “utility scale” community energy we normally mean anything from 50kW to 5MW. The solar panels needed to generate 50kW need about the space of a basketball court. To generate 5MW we need about 20 acres. The principles are all the same. In fact bigger is better as all the infrastructure cost is spread out over more generation..

Where will this solar farm be located?

We are actively investigating a number of currently paused solar farms to see if they may be viable as community owned projects.

So what are the risks to a project like this?

Well there are a lot of things that might make a project or a site unviable. Some can be budgeted against others are unpredictable. The biggest variable in a solar farm project seems to be the availability of capacity and the cost to connect to the Electricity grid. As it stand this does mean that many sites that might be ideal for a solar farm are economically unviable.

Does the government help community groups for projects like this?

SEAI Sustainable Energy Association of Ireland are the group tasked with helping community groups. Nationally Ireland has set a target of having 500MW of community owned energy projects by 2030. As a country we’ve a lot to do in not a lot of time!

Our project will generate revenue under the Small-Scale Generation Scheme (SSRESS), which was launched in 2024. This scheme gives a 17% premium for the electricity produced by a community project -v- by a for profit solar farm. Unfortunately getting to the point of claiming that premium is time consuming and expensive and beyond the resources of most volunteer organisations No community project has so far been successful. Brighter Kerry aims to be the first!