Renewable Energy Opportunities for Farmers
The rapid growth of the renewables industry has been of great advantage to farmers United Kingdom wide. Making sense of it all, however, can be difficult with policy changes, planning permissions and the question of profitability.
Alistair Fell, Renewables Specialist from H&H Land and Property highlights two renewable energy opportunities that are becoming increasingly popular: Anaerobic Digestion and Biomass.
Anaerobic digestion and Biomass are now leading contenders in the bid to reduce on farm costs and make the most of the resources we have at hand to produce energy or heat.
“We are currently involved in several large scale Anaerobic Digestion (AD) projects and the installation of plants, from 500kW up to 2MW using both maize silage and commercial waste. However the area where we have seen the most growth is in small scale AD, generally looking at between 50kW and 250kW plants. As an example, one of our clients is investing in an 80kW AD plant. This will be fed with the slurry from his 300 dairy herd and 30 hectares of grass silage.”
The plant will cost in the region of £600,000 and should see a simple payback from FIT income alone of approximately 6.5 years.
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