Arable

There are many challenges in generating profitable returns from arable. With significant changes ahead with the end of EU Single Farm Payment and the emergence of the UK Government Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme farmers will certainly need to continue to either grow larger to get further economies of scale or diversify their businesses. One way to generate non-farm revenue is with the deployment of renewable energy.

Roof Mounted Solar PV

Arable units generally have significant shed space dedicated to grain storage, straw bale storage and machinery & workshop services. Excellent returns are available for roof Solar PV especially if the unit is using a lot of onsite electricity for grain drying.

Ground Mounted Solar PV

Field-scale arrays of ground-mounted PV modules, are still a relatively recent development, seen in the UK only since 2011. Although earlier installations were much more easily secured given network capacity, significant opportunities still exist for large ground mounted arrays. The returns remain exciting, but to truly understand the potential of a prospective site it is now incumbent on the landowner to undertake a feasibility study. Caplor will be pleased to partner with you to undertake a feasibility study. Please contact us to discuss.

Grain Drying

The obvious decision if you are drying grain onsite is to invest in roof or ground mounted solar to generate low cost electricity for running the incumbent equipment. If new grain drying equipment is required, a heat pump using heat naturally extracted from the ground is now a real option. Look at Caplor options for Ground Source Heat Pumps. Please speak to us if you want to investigate further.

Solar Irrigation

Many exciting development are underway for off-grid Solar technologies. One of these is Solar Powered Irrigation Systems (SPIS) which are helping to transform crop production in parts of Africa and Asia where traditional network electricity infrastructure is not in place. These technological developments underway in emerging economies will have real potential for western agricultural production.