Solar Panels for Farms in Yorkshire

An independent guide to solar on farms in Yorkshire and the wider Yorkshire area, including Lancashire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire: what it costs, the planning rules, the grid and the funding position, from official sources.

Agricultural solar panels in Yorkshire

Yorkshire is England’s largest and most agriculturally varied county, and few places in the country offer farm solar a better fit. The Vale of York and the Yorkshire Wolds carry some of the most productive arable ground in the north — wheat, barley, oilseed rape and an expanding field-vegetable trade around Driffield, Malton and Selby. Climb west into the Dales and the picture shifts to dairy and beef, while the moors above Thirsk, Ripon and Skipton are sheep country. Layered on top is the fact that Yorkshire and the Humber is one of the UK’s heaviest pig-producing regions, with finishing and breeding units that run grain dryers, ventilation fans and feed systems around the clock. That breadth means almost every Yorkshire holding carries a daytime electrical load solar can offset — and a stock of large, modern farm-building roofs to carry the array.

The economics stack up here despite the northern latitude. Yorkshire receives roughly 950–1,000 kWh of generation per kWp installed each year — lower than the south coast, but the savings are driven by how much power you use on-site at 22–30p+ per unit, not by raw sunshine. A grain store, parlour, packhouse or pig unit drawing power through the day self-consumes 65–80% of what a well-sized roof array produces, and that is where the return comes from. The regional Distribution Network Operator is Northern Powergrid, which manages every connection across North, West, South and East Yorkshire and the Humber. Payback on a Yorkshire farm install depends on how much of the output the farm uses itself, and the system then runs for 25 years or more, turning a volatile cost line into a fixed, owned asset.

Field-edge and ground-mount options change the arithmetic completely — the 1-acre solar farm appraisal.

Farm solar across Yorkshire by district

Yorkshire’s scale means the right system looks very different depending on where the farm sits. The table below maps the dominant enterprise and a representative system size across the county’s main farming districts and market towns.

These are starting points from half-hourly meter data, not fixed packages. A pig finishing unit near Driffield with continuous ventilation will justify a far larger array than a Dales suckler herd that draws most of its power at milking — and the design follows the load profile, not the roof area.

Grants and tax relief for Yorkshire farms

Yorkshire farms are in England, where 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, with ground-based arrays excluded, but it closed to full applications 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.

With no grant open, the main lever for most Yorkshire farms is tax. Solar PV qualifies for the Annual Investment Allowance, letting a trading farm business deduct 100% of the install cost against taxable profits in the year of purchase — for a higher-rate or company-tax payer that can recover a substantial slice of the capital almost immediately. On top of that, the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) pays for every surplus unit exported to Northern Powergrid’s network, which matters in summer when an arable holding generates well above its weekday base load. Combine AIA and SEG and the net cost of a system drops sharply. We set this out in plain numbers on our farm solar cost and payback page, and keep a current view of every relevant scheme on the farm solar grants page.

Planning and grid in Yorkshire

For the great majority of Yorkshire farms, rooftop solar on an existing agricultural building is permitted development and needs no full planning application — a significant advantage given how much modern shed roofing the county carries. The picture tightens inside the two National Parks and the protected landscapes. The Yorkshire Dales National Park and the North York Moors National Park, along with the Nidderdale and Howardian Hills National Landscapes (AONBs), apply stricter design controls: ground-mounted arrays in these areas generally require full consent supported by a Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment (LVIA), while rooftop panels remain normally permitted development under Class J (Part 14 of the GPDO 2015) — no capacity limit, panels no more than 0.2 m proud of a pitched roof and at least 1 m from the roof edge, the council’s prior approval on design and glare above 50 kW, and listed buildings excluded. Even there, a well-detailed roof scheme — non-reflective panels, sympathetic colour, no visible disturbance to the building line — is frequently achievable. Outside the designated areas, across the Vale of York, the Wolds and Holderness, rooftop schemes are routinely straightforward.

On the grid side, every connection runs through Northern Powergrid. Systems are notified under the G99 process; smaller single-phase installs may qualify for simpler G98 notification, while most commercial farm arrays go through a G99 application with the option to apply an export limitation device where the local network is constrained. Rural feeders across the Dales and the Wolds can be lighter than those serving the towns, so an early connection check is worth doing before sizing the array — it is far cheaper to design an export limit in from the start than to discover a reinforcement bill late. A connection assessment belongs in the desk study before any panel is ordered — so you know the export position and any reinforcement cost before committing.

The practical upshot is that most Yorkshire farms — whether near Beverley, Ripon, Malton or Settle — can move from feasibility to a commissioned, generating system inside a single season, with the bulk of the work falling outside the busy harvest and lambing windows so the farm keeps running.

Typical Yorkshire farm solar projects

The examples below are representative enterprise-type ranges for the kinds of holdings found across the county — not specific named farms. Your figures come from your own meter data.

• A 250-cow Dales dairy near Skipton: parlour, bulk tank cooling and water heating give a steady daytime load for a 70–110 kWp roof array.

• A Vale of York arable and grain-drying unit near Selby: high late-summer drying demand pairs well with peak generation on a 120–200 kWp system.

• A Wolds pig finishing unit near Driffield: round-the-clock ventilation and feed plant self-consume nearly everything a 150–300 kWp array generates.

• A mixed beef and sheep holding near Northallerton: more modest, seasonal load with handling and workshop demand, suiting a 30–60 kWp scheme.

For a cost benchmark, DESNZ Solar PV cost data for 2025/26 put the median installed price of a 10–50 kW system in Great Britain at £1,262 per kW, including VAT where charged and excluding batteries. Every Yorkshire quote should start with your half-hourly data, a structural survey of the chosen roofs and a Northern Powergrid connection check, so the payback is built on your real consumption, not an industry average. SolarPanelsForFarms.uk is an independent guide, not an installer: an enquiry goes to a matched MCS-certified installer covering the area, which returns a desk feasibility within 3 working days.

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.