Solar Panels for Farms in North Yorkshire

An independent guide to solar on farms in North Yorkshire and the wider North Yorkshire area, including West Yorkshire, East Riding, County Durham: what it costs, the planning rules, the grid and the funding position, from official sources.

Agricultural solar panels in North Yorkshire

North Yorkshire is England’s largest county and one of its most varied farming landscapes, which is exactly why agricultural solar pays so well here. The fertile Vale of York carries some of the most productive arable ground in the north — cereals, oilseed rape, potatoes and sugar beet — while the uplands of the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors are sheep and beef country, and the lowland fringes around Thirsk, Easingwold and Malton support large dairy, pig and poultry units. These are energy-hungry enterprises. A robotic dairy parlour, a grain dryer running through harvest, a poultry shed with ventilation and lighting on year-round, or a refrigerated potato store all draw heavy daytime load — and that daytime load is precisely when a roof full of panels is generating. The closer your consumption sits to the middle of the day, the higher the proportion of free solar electricity you use on site rather than exporting, and the faster the array pays back.

The grid context matters here too. The bulk of North Yorkshire sits within the Northern Powergrid distribution region, the Distribution Network Operator (DNO) responsible for the wires, transformers and connection approvals across the county — from Skipton in the west to Scarborough on the coast and Northallerton in the north. Knowing how Northern Powergrid handles applications, and where rural network capacity is tight, is central to getting a farm array connected without delays. Irradiance across the county runs at roughly 1,000–1,050 kWh/kWp per year — modest against the south coast but more than enough to make solar worthwhile, because the avoided cost of every unit you would otherwise buy from the grid is what counts, and payback depends on how much of the output the farm uses itself. The long summer days this far north (above 54°N) keep arrays producing well into the evening from April to September, which suits livestock and arable operations whose loads peak across the working day.

Farm solar across North Yorkshire by district

North Yorkshire’s farming character changes sharply between the Dales, the Vale and the coast, and the right system size follows the enterprise rather than the postcode. The table below shows representative patterns across the county.

Pig, poultry and dairy units tend to pay back fastest because their load is steady and daytime-heavy, lifting self-consumption. Upland sheep and beef holdings around Skipton and the Dales typically run smaller arrays sized to the farmhouse, workshop and a livestock shed. If you farm closer to York, our dedicated York farm solar page covers the Vale of York arable belt and the city’s surrounding holdings in more local detail.

Grants and tax relief for North Yorkshire farms

North Yorkshire farms are in England, so the funding picture is the English one — and no grant for solar panels on farms is open. Round 2 of the Improving Farm Productivity (IFP) grant paid up to 25% of eligible costs — for solar, £15,000 minimum to £100,000 maximum — for panels on farm-building rooftops or irrigation reservoirs only, not ground-based arrays; full applications closed on 31 July 2025 and no further round has been announced. The Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF) 2026 window closed at midday on 12 May 2026, and its 2023–2026 item lists did not include solar panels to power a farm; Capital Grants 2026 and the Sustainable Farming Incentive have no solar items.

The tax position does the heavy lifting. Solar panels are special-rate plant, and most farms can deduct the whole cost in year one through the £1 million Annual Investment Allowance (AIA); a partnership with a company as a member cannot claim it, and a public grant reduces the cost you can claim on. For a profitable farm business that can turn a substantial slice of the system cost into an immediate tax saving, materially shortening the effective payback. On the income side, the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) obliges licensed suppliers to pay for every surplus unit you export to the grid, and each licensed supplier sets its own rate, which matters for harvest-period arable units and any holding that generates more than it can use mid-summer. See our farm solar grants guide for the status of each scheme on a working North Yorkshire holding.

Planning and grid in North Yorkshire

Planning is the area where North Yorkshire farms most often expect difficulty and most often find none. For the great majority of projects — panels mounted on the roof of an existing agricultural building such as a parlour, grain store, machinery shed or poultry house — installation falls under permitted development rights and needs no full planning application, provided it meets the standard size and siting conditions. That covers the bulk of farm installations across the county.

The places that need most care are North Yorkshire’s protected landscapes, and they are significant ones: the Yorkshire Dales National Park, the North York Moors National Park, and the Nidderdale and Howardian Hills National Landscapes (formerly Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty / AONBs). Rooftop solar on a farm building is still normally permitted development under Class J (Part 14 of the GPDO 2015) — no capacity limit, no more than 0.2 m proud of a pitched roof, at least 1 m from the roof edge, the local planning authority’s prior approval on design and glare above 50 kW, and listed buildings excluded — but any ground-mounted array — wherever it sits in the county — will generally require a full planning application, with extra weight given to landscape and visual impact within or near a National Park or National Landscape. Roof-mounted systems on existing buildings remain the simplest route; confirm the position with the relevant National Park Authority or North Yorkshire Council before any work begins. On the grid side, every connection runs through Northern Powergrid: arrays up to a defined threshold use the G98 notification, while larger farm systems require a G99 application for approval before commissioning. The installer normally handles the full Northern Powergrid submission, sizing the system to the capacity your connection can accept and flagging early where a rural network constraint might call for export limitation or a capacity upgrade.

Typical North Yorkshire farm solar projects

The figures below are representative ranges by enterprise type, not specific named farms — every quote is built from your own half-hourly meter data and roof survey.

• Upland sheep & beef holding (Dales / Moors fringe): a 20–40 kWp array across the farmhouse, workshop and a livestock shed, cutting the farm’s grid bill.

• Vale of York arable & grain storage: a 60–150 kWp roof-mount sized around grain-drying and store-cooling load. Because the heaviest demand falls in daylight through harvest and storage, self-consumption is high, with surplus summer generation earning under the SEG.

• Lowland dairy unit (Thirsk / Northallerton belt): an 80–200 kWp array on parlour, collecting yard and youngstock sheds. Continuous daytime load from milking, cooling and washdown keeps self-consumption high.

• Pig or poultry unit: a 100–250 kWp system matched to year-round ventilation, heating and lighting. Steady around-the-clock demand makes these among the strongest solar cases in the county, with the option of battery storage to capture overnight load.

SolarPanelsForFarms.uk is an independent guide, not an installer: a North Yorkshire enquiry goes to a matched MCS-certified installer covering the area, which returns a desk feasibility within 3 working days. See our full agricultural solar panel cost breakdown for the DESNZ reference price — a median £1,262 per kW for 10–50 kW systems in Great Britain — and how payback depends on how much of the output the farm uses itself.

For costs by system size see what agricultural solar panels cost; for funding, farm solar grants and capital allowances; for the regional picture, farm solar by UK region.