solar panels for agriculture in Leicester

Serving Leicester and the wider Leicestershire area, including Loughborough, Hinckley, Coalville.

Solar for farms across Leicestershire

Leicester sits at the centre of a county defined by farming. High Leicestershire, the rolling wolds to the east of the city, is classic mixed arable and grassland country, and the area around Melton Mowbray is the home of English farmhouse cheese and pork pie production, a reminder of how deep the agricultural roots run here. The Soar and Wreake valleys carry dairy and mixed holdings, Charnwood Forest to the north-west holds livestock and estate farms, and the arable land towards Market Harborough and the Northamptonshire border brings cereals and oilseed into the mix. Across all of it, energy has become one of the few large costs a farm can genuinely control, and solar PV is the most direct lever.

Leicester City Council has a 2030 net zero target under its Climate Action Plan and operates a Sustainable Procurement Strategy that favours suppliers with on-site renewables, a signal that increasingly reaches the farm supply chain. The wider East Midlands has a competitive installer base and supportive rural planning. For a Leicestershire farm, the questions that decide a project are roof condition, the shape of the load through the year, and grid capacity on the rural feeders out across the wolds and valleys.

Where farm solar works around Leicester

Mixed and arable farming dominates the county. The cereal and oilseed farms of High Leicestershire and the Harborough country offer good clear-span barn and grain-store roofs, with the grain dryer’s autumn peak shaping how we size the array. For an arable holding we model two routes: a larger system leaning on Smart Export Guarantee income across the year, or a smaller self-consumption design with battery storage to cover the drying season. The right answer depends on the farm’s load profile and capital appetite.

Dairy in the Soar and Wreake valleys is the fastest-payback segment, because milk cooling and parlour loads run around the clock and self-consumption is very high. The Melton area’s strong dairy and pork sectors include intensive units with large clear-span sheds and high ventilation loads that suit rooftop solar well. Beef and sheep on Charnwood and the wolds have a lower baseload and suit a system sized to the handling sheds and water heating, with surplus exported. Equestrian and diversified rural businesses across the county add demand that lines up with solar generation.

What Leicester’s net zero plans mean for your farm

The city’s 2030 target and its procurement strategy set the regional backdrop, but the day-to-day reality for a farm is planning and grid. Rooftop PV on agricultural buildings is generally Permitted Development under Class A Part 14 of the GPDO 2015, so most barn and shed-roof installs across Leicestershire need no full application. Ground-mount up to 9 metres by 9 metres and 4 metres high is permitted; larger schemes need planning permission, which Harborough, Melton, Charnwood and the surrounding district councils handle routinely.

For funding, regional SME schemes are worth checking, but the dependable financial levers for a farm are national. The 100% Annual Investment Allowance lets a farm business expense the full cost of qualifying solar plant against tax in year one, and the Smart Export Guarantee pays for surplus exported to the grid, which matters more for arable farms with seasonal load. We map the right combination to your tax position. Compare the routes on our grants and funding page.

Grid connection and roof condition across the county

Two practical constraints shape most Leicestershire farm installs. The first is the network. National Grid Electricity Distribution serves the East Midlands, and parts of the rural feeder network across the wolds and valleys are capacity-constrained, so a G99 connection above 17 kW per phase can take months. Where export headroom is tight, we size for self-consumption only, which keeps the array smaller, improves payback and can compress the connection timeline. For arable farms with a daytime drying load this often suits, and for the rest we model battery storage to lift on-site usage.

The second is roof age. Many farm buildings still carry asbestos cement roofing from before 2000, which cannot take panels. The usual route is a strip-and-reclad to profiled steel followed by PV on the new roof, with the solar business case helping fund a re-roof that was probably overdue. We assess roof condition during feasibility so the costings are honest from the start.

Local cost picture for East Midlands farms

A typical farm around Leicester spends from the low tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand pounds a year on electricity, depending on whether grain drying, milk cooling or livestock ventilation dominates the load. Across our farm work, rooftop cost runs at roughly £750 to £1,000 per kW for systems above 100 kW, with ground-mount cheaper per kW at larger scale. Dairy sits at the faster-payback end; arable paybacks improve with SEG export and battery storage. For worked examples, see our cost page.

Towns and areas we cover around Leicester

We deliver farm solar across the Leicester fringe and the wider Leicestershire countryside, including:

• Melton Mowbray and the Wreake valley dairy and mixed farms
• High Leicestershire and the eastern wolds arable and grassland country
• Market Harborough and the Welland valley cereal and oilseed arable
• Charnwood Forest and Loughborough fringe livestock and estate farms
• Hinckley and the western border mixed and dairy holdings
• Coalville and the north-west fringe mixed and diversified rural businesses

Many of our clients farm across district and county lines, and we deliver consistent design, modelling and reporting across the whole footprint. Coventry, Northampton and Derby are all within easy reach for site surveys.

Get a quote for your Leicester-area farm

We have delivered solar across UK agriculture from small mixed farms to multi-megawatt ground-mount schemes, and we understand the specifics of Leicestershire: the seasonal grain-drying loads that shape arable design, the strong dairy and pork sectors around Melton, capacity-constrained rural feeders, and asbestos roofs on older buildings. Every quote starts with a free desk-based feasibility study from your half-hourly meter data and roof drawings, with an indicative system size, generation forecast and payback figure inside seven working days.

If the numbers work, our engineers visit for a one-day structural and electrical survey before we issue a fixed-price proposal with full yield modelling. We will be honest if your site does not suit solar. Request your free quote and we will come back with real figures for your holding.