How Much Does an Acre of Solar Panels Make in the UK?

Updated 20 October 2026 · SEO Dons Editorial

“How much money does one acre of solar panels make?” is one of the questions people ask search engines most often about farm solar, and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on who owns the panels. This guide separates the two routes and shows the arithmetic, using published figures and labelling every calculation as an illustration. It is written by an independent publisher, not a developer or a land agent: take advice from a land agent and an accountant before acting on any figure here.

What one acre of solar holds

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) estimates that new ground-mount schemes built with current panels need 1.6 to 2 hectares (4 to 5 acres) per megawatt, against a measured median of 2.25 hectares (5.6 acres) per MW across 872 existing UK sites. Those figures include the gaps between rows, access tracks and the fenced margin. One acre is 0.4047 hectares, so on the new-scheme range one acre holds roughly 0.2 to 0.25MW, or about 200 to 250kWp of panels.

UK yield runs roughly 800 to 1,000kWh per kWp per year (PVGIS; the DESNZ measured median for 2024/25 was about 806). Multiplying through gives an illustrative 160 to 250MWh a year per acre. That is generation, not income: what it is worth depends on whether you use it, export it under a tariff, or sell it under a power purchase agreement.

Route 1: lease the land and take rent

Published rents cluster around £1,000 per acre per year. The Arup survey for DESNZ (July 2025) put land and rental costs at £800 to £1,000 per acre per year; Stephens Scown quoted £850 to £1,100 for subsidy-free solar in 2023; Brown & Co cited about £1,000 an acre in June 2024; and Fisher German was quoted in Farmers Weekly in July 2024 at up to £3,000 per hectare, about £1,200 per acre, with some deals adding a revenue share of around 4 to 6% of turnover. Rents are almost always index-linked and negotiated, and they are paid by a developer who funds the build, so you invest nothing. During the option period, before planning and a grid offer are secured, you normally receive only an option fee.

It helps to ask what rent replaces. Savills Research (November 2022) noted that the industry commonly quotes £2,500 per hectare as the premium over farming, but calculated the true margin nearer £2,100 per hectare, which is about £850 per acre. Agricultural Property Relief from inheritance tax is normally lost on land let for solar, which is why the tax advice matters as much as the rent. Our solar farm land lease guide goes through the deal structure and the tax points.

Route 2: own the array

If you build and own it, you keep the electricity value but you fund everything. For the capital line, the best official benchmark is the Arup report for DESNZ (July 2025), which puts utility ground-mount above 5MW at £526 to £789 per kWp in 2023 prices, excluding land. A one to five megawatt farm ground-mount usually costs more per kW than that, and grid reinforcement is extra. Applying the utility range to 200 to 250kWp gives an illustrative £105,000 to £197,000 of capital per acre.

What the electricity earns depends on how it is sold. For systems up to 5MW, suppliers with 150,000 or more customers must offer a Smart Export Guarantee tariff, and business export rates run roughly 3p to 15p per kWh, the top of the range usually requiring the same supplier for your import. Power used on the farm saves the import price instead, and the DESNZ non-domestic price for 20 to 499MWh a year is about 28.6p per kWh including the climate change levy, ex VAT. We have no sourced UK figure for a large scheme’s power purchase agreement price, so we do not model one.

Per acre (illustration)	Lease to a developer	Own the array
Capital you provide	None	Roughly £105,000 to £197,000 at utility-scale prices, before grid costs
Annual money in	Base rent about £800 to £1,100, index-linked	160 to 250MWh a year of generation; at 3p to 15p export that is roughly £4,800 to £37,500 gross, less if exported at the low end, more if used on site
Risk you carry	Option may never convert to a lease; land is tied up for decades	Build cost, grid cost, price, maintenance and the planning outcome
Tax	Rent is property income; APR is likely lost on the leased land	Capital allowances can apply; farm use of the output is a trading benefit

The owner-operator range is wide on purpose. Treat it as the gross value of the generation in two simple cases, not a profit figure: it ignores the capital, operating costs, degradation (about 0.5% a year) and the planning and grid risk. If your land is next to a large farm load, the picture changes, because on-site use is worth far more than export.

Which route fits which landowner

Lease: you want income without capital or operational risk, you accept the land is committed for 25 to 40 years, and your land has grid capacity nearby. Developers decide that, not you.
Own for the farm: you have a large daytime load (cooling, drying, processing) and can use most of the output on site. See ground-mount versus rooftop and our cost guide for the numbers.
Dual use: sheep grazing under or between the panels, covered in our agrivoltaics guide.

Try your own acreage

The solar farm land calculator applies the land-take and rent figures above to your own acreage and flags the planning position for your land grade. The result is a scale check before you speak to a land agent, not a valuation. Two things move a real offer more than anything else: distance to a substation with spare capacity, and whether competing developers are interested. Our guide to solar panels on farmland explains the three routes in full.

Frequently asked questions

How much do farmers get paid for solar panels on their land?

Published figures for leasing land to a solar developer cluster around £1,000 per acre per year, from £800 to £1,100 in most sources, index-linked, with some deals adding a revenue share of roughly 4 to 6%. Rents are negotiated and depend mainly on grid access, scheme size and competing interest.

How many solar panels fit on an acre?

On DESNZ’s land-take estimate for new schemes, one acre holds roughly 200 to 250kWp of panels. The exact number of panels depends on panel rating, row spacing and layout; the figure includes access tracks and the fenced margin.

Is it better to lease land or build my own solar farm?

Leasing needs no capital and pays a rent, but commits the land for decades and normally loses inheritance-tax relief on that land. Owning delivers more value per acre only where you can use or sell the output well and can fund the build and grid connection. Take land-agent and tax advice before choosing.

Sources

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