Orta Solar managed by the team that have constructed the UKs largest Solar PV portfolio to date, has been contacted by many farmers keen to install 50kW of Solar PV on 1/4acre of land or a barn roof before the next Feed in Tariff (FiT) reductions on 1st July. 50kW of Solar PV on a Farm still makes strong financial sense for those that act fast costing circa £90k & paying back circa £380k over 25yrs. But since 1st April there is a requirement that a building to which a Solar PV system is attached must be independently assessed to meet Energy Performance Certificate grade D (EPCD) or above in order to claim FiTs. How does this work for farms with a mixture of grain barns, cowsheds and often workshops / offices?
After studying the wording of the Government Response to Consultation on Comprehensive Review Phase 1 Tariffs for solar PV (without falling asleep!) and then applying it to the real life farms we work on every day, Orta now propose 2 routes forward to our farmer clients.
Start the PV installation process with a commercial EPC assessment on your farm buildings and then consider the cost of upgrading them to meet an EPC grade D as part of the PV installation. Advantage- the PV system would deliver savings on the electricity consumed in these buildings, but almost certainly with an additional capital requirement upfront,
Electrically disconnect the buildings from the non-buildings and connect the Solar PV system to the latter. Advantage- lowest cost to install the Solar PV, but would not save electricity used in the buildings.
So what are buildings and non-buildings? Paragraph 43 of the consultation states, …it should be possible to obtain an EPC for any building that meets the definition of building set out in the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (it is important to note that this includes buildings which are not currently required under that Directive to have an EPC when sold, let or built)8, the note 8 referring to, 8 Directive 2002/91/EC on the energy performance of buildings. This defines Trusted Developers & Operators of Solar PV building as, a roofed construction having walls, for which energy is used to condition the indoor climate; a building may refer to the building as a whole or parts thereof that have been designed or altered to be used separately.
So that is clear, a barn with open sides is not classed as a building. Nor is a grain barn, or un-heated milking shed, often substantial consumers of electricity, as they do not use energy to condition the climate. So far so good and it is now clear that an EPCD is not required on a structure that does not fall into the definition of a building. However, what happens with a chicken shed where energy is used to condition the climate, but it is used as part of the internal process rather than conditioning the indoor climate for human occupancy- EPCD or not? No answer yet from DECC on this type of grey area but Jonathan Scurlock of the NFU is lobbying hard for clarification in such instances.
Where this also gets muddled is the latter part of paragraph 43 which states, Additionally, in many cases we expect that solar PV installations which are attached to a building for which it is not possible to obtain an EPC, will nonetheless be wired to provide electricity to a building that is able to obtain an EPC. For example, this might include a solar PV installation attached to a barn that is also wired to provide electricity to a farmhouse. In this example, the requirement would still apply and could be met if an EPC were provided demonstrating that the farmhouse was rated at EPC level D or above.
The reality is that almost every commercial farm that we visit to install solar PV on their land or rooftops has several 3 or single phase supplies (different tariffs, metering, supply points & maybe even different suppliers) supplying a mixture of the farming operation non-buildings and the occupied buildings on the farm. Independent commercial EPC assessments can cost from £200 to £2,000+ where there are several occupied office units or buildings on a farm and the recommendations to upgrade the buildings may cost many thousands (but should be designed to pay back in terms of energy saved).
Hence, the conclusion is often the most straightforward way to install 50kW of Solar PV on most farms post 1st April is to separate out the metered supplies to the buildings and the non- buildings, the Solar PV just offsetting electricity consumed by the latter. It seems as shame that the revised FiT Govt. legislation (picking out Solar PV as the only technology demanding an EPCD before its installation) has the real life effect of potentially constraining the savings of installing the technology to one portion of a farms electricity usage, but that is the reality of making this work in real life situations.
