The Romney Marsh could be the site of one of the biggest solar farms to be built in the UK. Energy firm Low Carbon has revealed plans for a 500 megawatt (MW) facility at Old Romney – almost ten times the output from the nearby Little Cheyne Court wind farm – and producing enough energy to power 140,000 homes.
The facility – called South Kent Energy Park – could be built on either side of the A259 near the village.
Plans are yet to be submitted but Low Carbon says the site, the equivalent of 840 football pitches, will be connected to the National Grid either via an existing substation in Dungeness or a new substation proposed to be built nearby.
David Browne, of Canterbury-based solar firm Convert Energy, says he thinks “it could take some time” for the new scheme to be approved. “The positioning of this park makes a lot of sense. A huge part of the development costs of a solar park is in the grid connection and upgrade works. The existing infrastructure should be capable of handling the output of the solar park.”
“The key for Low Carbon will be getting the local community onside with the project,” Mr Browne added. The company is taking comments on its proposal online until December 20, and is hosting in-person events for residents to attend at Ivychurch Village Hall on Tuesday, November 26, and in New Romney Scout Hall on Wednesday, November 27. An online event will also be held on Thursday, December 12, from 6.30pm to 8pm.
A battery energy storage facility (BESS) is also proposed in the project, which will allow the power to be held and deployed when needed.
Cllr Paul Thomas (Ind), who represents the area on Folkestone and Hythe District Council (FHDC), said: “I want to see a bit more detail because it says in the outline as well as a solar farm they want to put in a battery system. What impact is it going to have on agriculture and agricultural jobs across the Marsh?”
Plans for any solar farm of 50MW or more do not go through the local council for permission – they are treated as nationally significant infrastructure projects. Instead, massive solar facilities need to get a development consent order from the government, after a long permission process.
Shortly after being elected, energy secretary Ed Miliband MP approved several huge solar projects around the country – two of 500MW, and one of 350MW.
James Hartley-Bond, project development director at Low Carbon, says the scheme “will play a crucial role in support of the UK’s decarbonisation targets. We look forward to engaging with the community and providing the opportunity for those who live and work closest to the project to learn more about Low Carbon’s emerging proposals.”
Image Credits: Google , Convert energy , Low Carbon .
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for green energy and understand that it involves a bit of an eyesore. After all we all want to come home and switch on the electric kettle.
BUT, to cover a vast area of ‘grade one’ agricultural land is a huge shame.
The Romney Marsh is probably one of the last areas of the country that can be used for food production without too much input. It is known as boy’s land compared to us poorer farmers on man’s land north of Rye. The only thing we can grow up here is grass and stress.
If they want to find some where to fit solar panels rent the roofs of all those millions of houses that they are planning to cover our land with. At least they will not have to put up any more pylons to get it to where its needed.
Does that mean the land north of Rye is better for this project? It does seem mad to lose quality farmland when there’s other less productive land available nearby.
That might be a better prospect. Although the solar developers would rather deal with the land owners down on the Marsh and their costs would be higher if they moved it onto lower grade land. The nimbys would have, for want of a better word, a field day.
Could community groups and local residents have the opportunity to invest their own money into the development to benefit financially from the proposal?
Obviously mixed feelings. We lose for ever the open marshland and 840 (!) Football pitches in area. Also the possibility of growing barley, maize, etc. to reduce our reliance on imports from unregulated sources.
BUT Dungeness is being decommissioned and there will be increasing demand for electricity to power and cool the massive data centres, to store millions of selfies!
Learn from Ireland where 21% of electricity goes to data storage sheds.
I suppose sheep could graze between the rows of panels.
On the contrary, by reducing agricultural use over it’s lifetime a solar farm enables the soil to be restored naturally, ensuring a viable future after 25 years or so. A farm can make more money harvesting solar than by growing crops unsustainably. It’s that or more sparkling wine…
It’s not sparklng wine it’s food crops we need. Reduce agriculture and starve.
Clean power is not achievable and will not lead to cheaper electricity. The National Energy System Operator has told Miliband that a full fleet of gas power plants will be needed to fire up when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine -costing billions in standby payments.
The Battery Energy Storage Facility “allows power to be held and deployed when needed.” A glib assumption ignoring the fact that it can only do so for a very short time. A few hours is not much use in our cloudy climate and long dark winters. Batteries have to be recharged, robbing customers and industries.
A Davis – FYI today (Saturday) wind power is generating 13,947 MW
33% of the UK’s electricity demand. You can check it here:
https://winderful.uk/
Thank you but 8 of the 25 turbines visible on the marsh today are not working. Either because the wind is too strong or down for maintenance. We customers and tax-payers are footing the bill through subsidies.
Anything proposed by Milliband should be scrutinised through a microscope. Remember what a disaster he was with, for instance, his slabs engraved with Labour’s “!0 Commandments” (where did they disappear?) down to his inability to eat a bacon butty without dribbling it all over himself? On a more serious note, however, is it wise to sacrifice so much land to a grandiose project that needs to be explained in much greater detail before such a huge chunk of Romney Marsh is lost forever?
Solar farms can have positive impacts on biodiversity, including:
Increased plant and animal diversity: Solar farms can have more diverse plant and animal species than other types of intensive land use.
Rare species: Solar farms can benefit rare species like moths, foraging bats, yellowhammers, and grey-legged partridges, encouraging ecotourism.
Increased pollination: Solar farms can increase fruit crop pollination for orchards near wildflower meadows.
Wetland bird breeding: Solar farms can positively impact wetland bird breeding when artificial wetland features are introduced.
Reduced nitrogen loads: Solar farms can reduce nitrogen loads.
Enhanced pesticide filtration: Solar farms can enhance pesticide filtration.
Mammal sightings: Solar farms can be home to a variety of mammals, including brown hares, badgers, foxes, rabbits, weasels, common shrews, field voles, and three types of deer.
Solar farms can have these positive impacts when developers:
Cultivate tree-rich hedgerows
Integrate solar panels with vegetation
Manage the land proactively for biodiversity
Use actions like conservation mowing or grazing, removal of arisings, and the creation of a range of habitats.
My immediate reaction is that the size of the project is simply too large in terms of surface area covered by the panels. It’s clearly overdevelopment. I’d possibly give qualified support for a smaller project of, say, 200 MW. This could supply power to 56,000 homes, which would easily cater for residents of the marshes, towns such as Rye, Lydd, New Romney and many more. The proposed project would involve a massive loss of agricultural land, which is now coming into focus as concerns increase regarding food security in the UK. What is the current land use? Sheep farming for lamb – which is mainly exported – is perhaps not the best activity, but if the location can be used for arable crops, then I’d prefer to see that. Solar panels need to be located on land that offers no or very little agricultural benefit, and especially on the top of houses. In my view, every home that’s not a listed building should have solar panels. My own preference would be to install a few more wind farms on the marshes, because these could be placed in remote spots and they don’t impact as heavily on land use.
I know very little about sheep farming and even less about wind farms but is there a reason why sheep can’t be grazed in the same fields as the turbines are in?
It could be an interesting test case to trial how the land use is diversified. It would be interesting to hear from the farmers about this. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/13/farmers-who-graze-sheep-under-solar-panels-say-it-improves-productivity-so-why-dont-we-do-it-more
Hopefully solar farms like this will be a temporary inconvenience in our countryside with the advent of more energy efficient appliances & homes. They and wind turbines can be quickly removed when not required unlike the remains of Dungeness A & B which will need to be managed for hundreds of years into the future.
New advances in energy generation such as the facility at JET (Joint European Torus) will hopefully provide us with energy options that will not blight our countryside, not generate greenhouse gasses, and mean we don’t have to buy fossil fuels from tyrants or create radioactive waste.
There was a very interesting piece on countryfile (I believe?) showing the massive benefits to wildlife of solar farms if they are managed correctly. Hopefully this one will benefit the habitats of the flora and forna previously destroyed by farming monoculture.
I do not think turbines can quickly be removed looking at the huge concrete foundations underneath. Permanent environmental damage.
Thank you, Neil, well said. A. Davis says that clean power is not achievable and seems to criticise both wind and solar generation. What is he proposing? More coal/oil/nuclear? More offshore wind turbines (at considerable expense)? Positive suggestions, please.
Solar and wind energy is not the most reliable way to produce what we need. Solar only generates when the sun shines and the demand is usually when it gets cold and at night. No sun , no generation. Storing it in batteries has it’s limitations. what ever we do it has a down side.
However there might be a solution.
Why not use that excess generation to make hydrogen.
Hydrogen can be difficult to store, but so is gas, and most existing gas powered appliances, with a little tweaking, will be able to use it. Even an internal combustion engine.
When you burn Hydrogen you get ….. H2O.
Just think, if we invested in building solar and wind power in the North African Countries there is no end of sunshine there. They can’t produce food in a dessert, but look how much Hydrogen can be generated there.
Just wishful thinking.
Yes.
People are happy to have their EV made by coal-burning China with the loss here of jobs and industry?
Our government shut down our gas production saying gas can be bought on the international market – so now gas is too expensive and the responsible PM is rewarded with a lucrative US lecture tour.
I often think of the comment by John Seymour many years ago – along the lines of “I don’t mind a line of pylons marching across my valley if I know it’s power generated sustainably”.
We don’t get to keep a pre-industrial world, and if we try – we don’t get to keep a world at all.
Thanks for raising the issue of data centres Chris McGrath. No one is talking about the energy they require. I heard on the Digital Human on BBC R4 a few weeks ago that a ChatGPT search requires 30 times more energy than a regular search. It’s similar to the emissions from flying.
A Davis FYI your comment about subsidies to wind turbines:
The UK’s domestic fossil fuel subsidies are estimated at £13.6 billion a year, most of this as tax reductions. The same analysis ranked the UK 11th out of 11 OECD countries for transparency on fossil fuel funding.
This is an excellent idea, particularly with the plan to have a battery storage unit and close access to the existing grid which had been used by Dungeness. The opposition reminds me of the wind turbines proposal many years back (lots of fake news about what the wind turbines would do to us). The turbines have added to our energy infrastructure and they are pleasing to view as they reflect the sun and dance to the wind. This solar farm would not have that aesthetic of course, but every community needs to do its part if want a sustainable future.
At least the proposed farm is not in Rye’s back yard, although one might be able to see it from the church tower. However before accepting the basic premise for its creation readers might like to examine the counter-narrative – that abandoning fossil fuels will impoverish the nation, and that anyway the majority of climate change is more to do with sunspots, volcanic activity and El Niño than human activity. See https://dailysceptic.org/2024/11/29/the-ed-miliband-phenomenon-what-makes-britains-most-dangerous-man-tick/#comments.
Given that you probably think the Earth is flat too, yes you would see it from the church tower.