Farm Solar Grants & Funding in 2026

Funding solar panels for agriculture in 2026

There is a persistent myth that the money for farm renewables dried up when the old feed-in tariff closed. It did not vanish, but it is built differently. There is no open capital grant for farm solar in 2026; instead the support comes from a stack: a universal tax relief that applies to almost every farm, an export tariff for the units you do not use, and, on the right land, ground-mount lease income. Farms in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should check current devolved schemes, none of which pays for solar panels at the time of writing.

The catch is that no single route covers a whole project, and several are easy to miss. This guide walks through each in turn, with the realistic value range, so you know what to ask for. As always, the figures here are illustrative and depend on your structure, your land and your load.

The one that always applies: 100% Annual Investment Allowance

Start here, because it applies to almost every farm regardless of trading structure. Solar PV is special-rate plant and machinery, and the 100% Annual Investment Allowance lets companies, partnerships and sole traders deduct the whole spend from first-year profit, up to £1m of qualifying outlay each year. For a limited company that deduction is worth roughly a 25% effective tax saving in year one; partnership and sole-trader farms see a comparable benefit through self-assessment.

The practical point is that almost every farm rooftop install falls well within the £1m cap and is relieved in full in year one under the AIA, rather than written down slowly in the 6% special-rate pool. Solar does not qualify for full expensing, but above £1m a company can claim the 50% special-rate first-year allowance. Relief lands in the year you build, which is precisely when the cash matters most. You can read the detail on capital allowances at GOV.UK, and our cost guide shows how it reshapes payback.

The income stream: Smart Export Guarantee

The Smart Export Guarantee pays you for surplus units exported to the grid, on systems up to 5 MW, with MCS certification needed up to 50 kW, at business rates of roughly 3p to 15p per kWh. For most of UK commercial solar this is a minor line, because always-on businesses consume nearly everything they generate. On a farm it can be material.

The reason is the seasonal load profile. An arable holding whose biggest load is a grain dryer running hard for a few autumn weeks will export a great deal the rest of the year, so the SEG rate genuinely affects the return. It is worth shopping the export tariff rather than accepting the first offered, and worth modelling export income alongside self-consumption rather than treating it as an afterthought. You can find the scheme detail at the Ofgem Smart Export Guarantee pages.

The dual-land-use route: Sustainable Farming Incentive

This is the one farms most often misunderstand. The Sustainable Farming Incentive does not pay for standalone solar. There is no SFI action that simply funds panels on a shed.

SFI reopened as SFI26 in 2026, but it pays for land-management actions, not solar panels, so it is not a route to fund the array. Agrivoltaic arrays, solar above grazing or sheltering crops, can leave the land in agricultural use, and land under panels can sometimes sit alongside separate environmental actions, subject to scheme rules, so check with the Rural Payments Agency before assuming any payment. On a ground-mount scheme the lease income is the dependable line; any environmental payment on the same acres is something to confirm, not to bank.

Farming Investment Fund: closed for solar

The Farming Investment Fund was the umbrella for the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund and Farming Transformation Fund in England, and it is not an open route for solar. FETF 2026 closed at midday on 12 May 2026 and did not fund solar panels, and Improving Farm Productivity, which offered 25% towards rooftop solar, closed in July 2025 with no further round.

Indirect routes are limited too. Pairing solar with an eligible item, a new grain dryer, a dairy parlour upgrade, does not bring the panels into scope, and the relevant rounds are closed. It is worth checking GOV.UK for any new round rather than assuming one, because the eligibility lists change between funding rounds.

Wales and Scotland: check your devolved scheme first

If your farm is in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, do not benchmark against England, but do not assume a devolved grant will fill the gap either. At the time of writing no Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish scheme pays for solar panels on farms: Scotland's CARES is for community groups rather than farm businesses, and the Business Energy Scotland SME loan is closed to solar PV. The UK-wide AIA and SEG still apply. A devolved farm should check current schemes before deciding, but plan the business case without a grant.

Stacking the routes: an illustrative example

Consider an illustrative example, not a real project: a large family arable farm with around 12 acres of marginal pasture that crops poorly. Rather than buy a system outright, the farm leases the land to a UK developer for a 1.8 MW ground-mount array of roughly 3,300 panels generating about 1.7 million kWh a year. The lease runs 25 years at around £1,000 per acre per year, index-linked (illustrative; surveys put rents at roughly £800 to £1,000), the land continues to graze sheep, and, subject to scheme rules, separate environmental actions may sit alongside the lease on the same acres.

In that single scheme the farm is using two of the routes above at once: the developer captures the export value, and the lease delivers a reliable rent well above the arable rental it replaced, with any environmental payment on the same land something to confirm with the RPA. No capital changed hands on the farm’s side. The numbers depend entirely on the developer terms available in your region and your grid position, and we would never present a worked example as a guaranteed outcome for a different holding. The detail for cropping enterprises sits on our arable farms page.

How to make sure you claim everything you qualify for

The recurring mistake is treating funding as a single decision rather than a stack, or waiting for a grant that is not open. A farm that takes only the AIA leaves SEG income and, on the right land, ground-mount lease income on the table. A farm that holds off for a capital grant may wait for a round that never comes. The order that works is: confirm the AIA position with your accountant, ask the installer to model SEG export income against self-consumption, test whether any land suits a ground-mount lease, and, in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, check current devolved schemes.

Our funding guide sets out every route a farm may qualify for, so you are not left to find them. To see the full picture for your holding, read the grants and funding page, run the savings calculator, then request a free quote and an installer covering your area can work through the options for your farm.