By Paul Homewood
Homeowners and farmers are being threatened with having their land effectively confiscated to make way for solar farms to meet Britain’s net zero target, The Telegraph can disclose.
Energy firm Sunnica has submitted plans to build a 2,792 acre solar farm and energy storage infrastructure on the Suffolk and Cambridgeshire borders.
If the Planning Inspectorate recommends to ministers that the plans should be given the go-ahead later this year, it will be the largest solar farm built in the UK so far, providing power for 100,000 homes.
But MPs and residents living in many of the small villages in the area have decried proposals by Sunnica to use compulsory purchase orders for land on which it needs access and where it cannot reach a negotiated settlement with owners.
This would include significant sections of land under which to lay electricity cables connecting the solar panels and battery storage units to the Burwell National Grid Substation in Cambridgeshire.
It could also see the compulsory purchase of land to create wider roads and access points to allow construction of the huge project, which is equivalent to the size of 2,115 football pitches.
The company stated that it “requires powers of compulsory acquisition to ensure that the scheme can be built, maintained and operated, and so that the Government’s policies in relation to the timely delivery of new generating capacity and achieving ambitious net zero targets are met.”
‘Completely wrong’
Matt Hancock MP, the former health secretary, who along with Lucy Frazer, a Treasury minister, represents the area earmarked for the development, told The Telegraph: “By attempting to force through unpopular proposals they [Sunnica] damage the case for delivering the renewables we need.
“I support solar developments locally where they are in the right place, with the support of us locally. The way Sunnica has gone about this is completely wrong.”
More than a dozen land and property owners are thought to be holding out against Sunnica’s attempt to acquire “an interest” in their land in order to lay cables and gain or improve access to the sites on which the solar farm would be built.
In all these cases Sunnica say “no progress” is being made in negotiations, indicating they may need to move to compulsory purchase.
‘We’ll be sitting next to a ticking time bomb’
Richard Tuke, a landowner who is refusing to allow 800 acres of his land at Freckenham to be used by Sunnica, stated in a consultation document: “Our withdrawal from the scheme does not prevent Sunnica from including our land in their submission to the Inspectorate nor does it stop them from applying for compulsory powers to purchase our land should they choose to do so.
“We have however written the Inspectorate formally telling them that Sunnica are including our land without permission.”
Local views ‘squeezed out’
The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, which supports solar power in brownfield sites, has criticised Sunnica for pursuing its plans through the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime, saying “this risks squeezing local views and local scrutiny out of the decision-making process”.
It added: “It’s worrying that the applicant is also proposing to apply for Compulsory Purchase Orders where it can’t reach a negotiated settlement with affected landowners.”
Critics have also decried the size of the solar farm on what is open agricultural land and the potential danger of the large lithium-ion battery units needed to store the electricity generated by solar panels before transfer to the National Grid. In recent years similar battery units have been involved in fires and explosions in Britain and abroad.
Critics have also decried the size of the solar farm on what is open agricultural land
Mr Hancock said: “Even the most ardent supporter of renewable energy can see that putting a huge battery farm right next to villages is a bad idea. Those behind this proposal have completely failed to bring the community with them, refused to attend all the key meetings and haven’t even tried to win over local support.”
South Korea saw 23 battery farm fires in just two years and a recent battery fire in Illinois burned for three days, with thousands of residents evacuated. Lithium-ion batteries used in solar farm energy storage systems were deemed an “unacceptable risk” in Arizona after causing two serious fires in 2019.
In Merseyside, one of three battery cabins on a site caught fire and exploded in 2020 and nearby residents were ordered to stay indoors.
Solar farm battery units are not covered by the Control of Major Accident Hazards regulations and are unregulated under UK law.
Risk of explosions and toxic gas
Professor Wade Allison, emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, and a panel of experts last year warned that with the potential for huge explosions, fires and clouds of toxic gas, they could devastate towns and villages nearby.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/15/land-may-seized-make-way-solar-farms-net-zero-drive/
The solar farm will be 500MW, but on average will only operate at about 60MW. In other words, it is miniscule in energy terms, despite its industrial scale footprint of 2115 football pitches. You would, for instance need 33 of these monstrosities to provide the same amount of power as a 2GW gas power station such as Carrington, (which you would need anyway to provide backup!).
It is hard to comprehend the size when expressed in acres, but one acre = 1/640th of a square mile.
Therefore Sunnica will be over 4 square miles.
The construction alone, which will take three years, will be massively disruptive to locals, and as the article points out the battery storage situated just a mile away from one of the villages is an accident waiting to happen.
There is something drastically wrong with our planning system, if industrial developments like Sunnica can take place in the middle of pristine countryside without locals having any say in the matter.
Correction: the Carrington power station has two CCGT units producing 442.2 MW each for a total output of 884 MW, not 2 GW. There are an additional 4 small (60 MW) units planned, so the eventual capacity will be 1144 MW.
It’s an indication of how pervasive the Carbon Cult has become that even when doing something sensible, people feel the need to kowtow to green theology:
They are all for solar, just not in their backyard.
Cant they emote globally and acquiesce locally? What is wrong with these deniers?
Even NIMBY is green. When anything other than wind and solar is locally stopped it is a good thing to the Leftists. When industrial solar and wind projects are impeded locally, it is right wing obstructionism.
Leftists have a tendency to define right and wrong, good and evil, based solely on whether they benefit.
“providing power for 100,000 homes” is really “providing power for 100,000 homes when the sun is shining”. By their own admission, nameplate is 500 MW and deliverable is 60 MW for a utilization rate of 12%. That is awful and a horrible investment.
You can see a fair chunk of Australia lies above the Tropic of Capricorn-
24c490e8f6f5ecccffc39a4d38d57342.jpg (1525×745) (pinimg.com)
Nevertheless even in the NW of Australia above the Tropic they can bare earth 20 square metres of Gaia per nameplate AC kilowatt-
Woodside submits plans for a million solar panels near Karratha (smh.com.au)
and I calculated as much as 37.5 squ metres per kW below in in the SE near Balranald in the Sunraysia.
You can get away with that scorched earth policy in remote arid areas but the hackles rise the closer they get to civilisation and prime farming land. All that landfill the special companies set up to contract to build and run them will dissolve into thin air when it comes time to scrap them. Just like the wind turbines.
Unless they are getting a much higher price for electricity than a gas plant the solar plant makes no sense.
You need a gas plant for backup and the capital costs, interest and maintenance for the solat plant will exceed the fuel costs of simply running a gas generator.
In other words, the extra cost of the solar exceeds the cost of fuel for a gas plant. You are simplyvwasting money while taking away valuable farmland.
Why build the solar farm on prime agricultural land? Build it on rocky ground with no commercial value.
Otherwise you need to add the value of lost food production to the cost of the solar plant. A not insignificant cost.
Solar PV at 52 N latitude is ridiculously stupid. Add in the long dreary cloudy days and it is insane to think this is a good. Sunnica is merely harvesting whatever tax credits and free money thrown at them by even more stupid pols.
Add up the value of all the electricity that can be stored and released during the lifetime of the battery.
That number will equal the cost of the battery.
As such, the only way you can add batteries to a grid is to dramatically raise the price of electricity. But this will dramatically increase the cost of producing batteries.
Unless all those batteries are produced in China, and the competition among buyers for Chinese production capacity doesn’t cause their delivered prices to increase.
Why would they build this solar farm on level agricultural land? It makes no sense. The solar farm is at 52 N latitude.
They should build the farm on a south facing hill with a slope of 52 degrees. No one is going to farm the land and you don’t need to space the panels to avoid shading adjacent panels.
Building on flat land is a silly waste of good land when building on a hill will improve the efficiency of the watts/meter².
All makes sense, but you know that once they get to construction they will building it on the north side of the hill
it will be the largest solar farm built in the UK so far, providing power for 100,000 homes.
100k homes, maybe a fraction of that, and for a few minutes a day, but not every day
“It’s worrying that the applicant is also proposing to apply for Compulsory Purchase Orders where it can’t reach a negotiated settlement with affected landowners.”
Perhaps they didn’t get the memo: “Sit down and shut up!” he reasoned.
2700 acres for 100,000 homes = less than 4 homes per acre. Yeah, that’s “sustainable”.
Unfortunately it will probably take the deaths of many thousands of people before the general populace understands the utter folly of these “Net Zero” schemes.
No, it will only take the average voter to understand the cost to them personally of the politicians’ folly.
Death is pretty personal when it’s someone you know.
Now just you remember there, farmers in Suffolk.
you have been told enough times.
you will own, nothing, and you will be happy.
Not to mention building solar installations at 52.5 degrees north latitutde in a cloudy area with a yearly sunshine average of 1500 hours.
During a TV broadcast of the recent Test Cricket match in Hobart, the camera scanned slowly over some big new homes on nearby hills. One big white-pained home looked lovely, except that the group of what looked like about 20 solar panels had also been painted white over their exposed surface, to get the best colour coordination. Or so it seemed. Geoff S
4 square miles for 100,000 homes, WOW. For how long a day will this be providing power for them, 2,4,6, then what when the suns not shining? You know day does turn into night. oh battery back-up. How big and for how long will it provide power for? England’s not renowned for being a sunny place to live. Whats the overall footprint for a coal fired power station – or heaven forbid a nuclear power plant.
The problem is that most people do not realise how totalitarian our government has become and continue to believe that individual rights are respected. Ask anyone who has suffered from HS2 being routed and built through their neighbourhood over the last 10 years. The situation with grotesque wind and solar farms is no different.
Well Mr Hancock, this is what happens if you support solar energy & other ruinables.