About

With the climate emergency accelerating, it is vital that we do everything we can to limit carbon emissions to mitigate the impact of global rises in temperature. This means moving away from energy produced by burning fossils and transitioning to clean energy production that vastly reduces or eliminates carbon emissions.

Harnessing the sun’s energy is one of the most effective and efficient ways to produce sustainable electricity.

Developments such as this one are also essential because they help enhance the UK’s energy security, making the country less dependent on imports of oil and gas from other parts of the world which can be subject to large costs swings and interrupted supply.

This site has been chosen for a number of reasons. It is flat and has limited environmental constraints, as well as being close to the National Grid’s Saltend substation. This is particularly important and is why you often find solar farms in clusters – they have to be relatively close to a National Grid connection point, meaning it is not uncommon to find a number of them in the same area.

The agricultural land grading varies across the site, but the layout of the scheme will be optimised to utilise the lowest grade land to ensure the best agricultural land can be retained for crops. Even with the solar panels in place, the land can still be used to graze sheep so will combine energy production with food production. As part of the application, an Environmental Impact Assessment will be carried out.

We believe the development will have a very limited impact on the communities surrounding the site.

During the construction phase, there may be a small increase in traffic, and at some points during daylight hours in the working week, some noise associated with construction. However, this will be strictly managed as part of a detailed construction management plan that sets out when vehicles can enter and leave the site, and when construction activities can take place.

Vehicular access to the site during construction will be along Wyton Road rather than Neat Marsh Road on the recommendation of ERYC’s Highways department following pre-application consultation, as this will have the least impact.

Once completed, maintenance of the scheme will mainly require infrequent visits from transit vans and similar sized vehicles. In fact, as the site is currently part of a working farm, once the solar farm is operational, there will be less movements of large plant and machinery on the site.

While the solar panels have no working parts and rely on the sun to produce electricity, and the scheme as a whole produces minimal noise, the layout of the site will be designed to ensure that it will not be close to residential properties.

The panels will stand around 2.5 – 3m tall which is the standard height for a solar farm. However, as part of the design we will be including visual shielding in the form of native trees and hedgerows, meaning that over time the development will become less and less visible.

As a considerate developer, we are committed to ensuring we produce a net gain in biodiversity on the site and are working closely with our partners to ensure we deliver this. This will be achieved in several ways, including:

• Planting native vegetation to mitigate the visual impact of solar panels. The vegetation – trees and hedges – will provide vital habitat for insects, birds, and mammals
• Installing bat boxes and owl boxes, and creating log piles for insects to live in
• Providing land around the development as habitat for wintering and breeding birds.

Solar farms are time-limited developments with a typical lifespan of around 35 – 40 years. They have no detrimental impact on the land on which they are located, meaning after this time, the land can be returned to crop production on regenerated soil.