Solar Panels for Farms in Leicestershire

Specialist agricultural solar PV across Leicestershire and the wider Leicestershire area, including Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire. MCS-certified, capital grant-backed, fixed-price proposals within 7 working days.

Agricultural solar panels in Leicestershire

Leicestershire sits at the agricultural crossroads of the East Midlands, and its farming is as mixed as any county in England. The arable belt around Market Harborough and the Welland valley grows wheat, oilseed rape and field beans on heavy clay loams, while the rolling pasture of the Wreake valley and the country around Melton Mowbray carries the dairy herds that supply the Stilton creameries and Melton’s pork-pie trade. To the north and west, the National Forest and the wooded uplands of Charnwood frame a landscape of sheep, beef and the historic hunt country around the Quorn — grassland farms with high winter housing loads and reliable summer grazing. This breadth of enterprise is exactly why solar pays here: a county where grain dryers, milking parlours, refrigeration and feed systems all draw heavily from the grid is a county where on-site generation displaces expensive imported electricity at the point it is used.

The economics are straightforward once you read a farm’s half-hourly meter data. Across Leicestershire the local distribution network operator is National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED, East Midlands) — the former Western Power East Midlands network — and rising standing and unit charges have pushed many farm businesses well past the point where a roof full of panels makes obvious sense. The county’s irradiance, at roughly 1,000–1,050 kWh per kWp installed each year, is typical of the Midlands and entirely sufficient: a well-oriented agricultural array generates the great bulk of its output between March and October, when grain drying, ventilation, cooling and irrigation demand peak. At a gross install cost of around £600–£900 per kWp — falling to roughly £360–£540 per kWp net once capital allowances are claimed — most Leicestershire farm systems return their cost in 2 to 4 years and then generate effectively free power for another two decades. You can see the full breakdown on our agricultural solar panel cost page.

Farm solar across Leicestershire by district

Leicestershire’s enterprises vary sharply by district, and so do the systems that suit them. The table below shows representative configurations for the county’s main farming areas — every project is sized from your actual consumption, not a rule of thumb.

Grants and tax relief for Leicestershire farms

Leicestershire farms are in England, so the funding picture is the English one — there is no Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish scheme on the table here. The headline support comes through the Improving Farm Productivity grant, the grant strand of the wider Farming Investment Fund, which can contribute up to 25% of the capital cost of eligible items such as battery storage and certain renewable kit, subject to a £100,000 cap per business across the funding round. Because FETF rounds open and close periodically and the eligible-items list changes, we check live eligibility for your holding before you commit to anything.

The larger and more reliable saving for most farms is tax-based. The 100% Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) lets a trading farm business deduct the full cost of a qualifying solar installation against taxable profits in the year of purchase — for a higher-rate or corporation-tax payer that is what turns roughly £600–£900 per kWp gross into an effective £360–£540 per kWp net, and it is the single biggest reason Leicestershire paybacks land inside three years. On the income side, the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) pays you for surplus units exported to the grid, which matters on dairy and arable holdings whose generation peaks in summer when on-farm demand is lower. Our grants page walks through how FETF, AIA and SEG stack together for a typical Leicestershire farm.

Planning and grid in Leicestershire

For the overwhelming majority of Leicestershire farms, planning is not an obstacle. Roof-mounted solar on an existing agricultural building is generally permitted development, so a system on a grain store, dairy parlour, livestock shed or packhouse roof can usually proceed without a full planning application. Leicestershire has no National Park within its boundary, but it does contain genuinely sensitive landscapes: the National Forest across the north-west and the rolling, partly designated country of Charnwood, where the historic landscape and hunt-country setting carry weight with planners. Ground-mounted arrays — and any rooftop scheme on a listed building or within a conservation area — will need consent, and in or near the National Forest and Charnwood we always advise an early conversation with Leicestershire County Council and the relevant district authority before designing the array.

On the grid side, the connecting network is National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED, East Midlands). Almost every farm system above a small domestic scale connects under the G99 process, with NGED reviewing the application against local network capacity. Some rural feeders in the more remote parts of the county — around the National Forest fringe and the upland edges of Charnwood — have limited headroom, which can shape how much you can export. We handle the full G99 application on your behalf, design the system to fit the connection you can realistically obtain, and where export is constrained we use battery storage to capture surplus generation rather than waste it.

Typical Leicestershire farm solar projects

Rather than fabricate a named case study, here is what genuinely representative Leicestershire projects tend to look like by enterprise type. Your own figures will depend on your meter data, roof orientation and how much of your demand falls in daylight hours.

Wreake-valley dairy (Melton area): A milking herd with a parlour, bulk tank refrigeration and water heating typically suits a 50–150kW roof array across the parlour and adjoining sheds. Cooling and washdown demand tracks daylight closely, so self-consumption is high and payback usually lands around 1.7–2.3 years.

Welland-valley arable (Market Harborough area): A combinable-crops holding with a grain store and dryer carries a sharp late-summer load that coincides with peak generation. An 80–250kW grain-store roof system, sometimes paired with storage, commonly pays back in 1.6–2.2 years and slashes drying-season import costs.

Charnwood & National Forest livestock (Loughborough/Coalville area): Beef and sheep holdings with winter housing, ventilation and lighting suit 30–120kW barn-roof arrays. Summer self-consumption is lower than on dairy units, so SEG export and a modest battery improve returns, with paybacks typically 1.9–2.6 years.

Leicester-fringe horticulture & processing: Market gardens, packhouses and on-farm cold stores carry steady, high daytime loads ideal for 100–300kW systems on large packhouse roofs, with paybacks around 1.6–2.1 years thanks to near-total self-consumption.