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 public and private buyers increasingly ask suppliers about their carbon footprint, a signal that is reaching 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 the array should be sized. For an arable holding, ask the installer to 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, so an array sized to that daytime load uses most of its output on site. 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 sets 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 Part 14 Class J of the GPDO 2015, with no capacity cap, so most barn and shed-roof installs across Leicestershire need no full application; systems over 50 kW need prior approval from the council on design and appearance. Ground-mount arrays should be treated as needing 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 Annual Investment Allowance gives 100% tax relief in year one on qualifying solar plant up to £1m a year, and the Smart Export Guarantee pays for surplus exported to the grid, which matters more for arable farms with seasonal load. Check the right combination with your accountant. 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. Any system above 16 A per phase (about 11 kW three-phase) needs a G99 application, which can take months. Where export headroom is tight, an installer can 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; otherwise ask the installer to 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 should not have panels fixed to it. 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. Ask the installer to 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. As an indicative guide, installer and industry price guides (there is no official cost series above 50 kW) put rooftop systems of 100 kW and above at roughly £650 to £1,050 per kW ex VAT, for example £75,000 to £105,000 for 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 illustrative examples, see our cost page.

Towns and areas we cover around Leicester

Installers we pass enquiries to cover 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 farms run across district and county lines, so ask the installer to provide consistent design, modelling and reporting across the whole footprint. Coventry, Northampton and Derby farms are covered by the same enquiry route, and the installer arranges any site survey.

Get a quote for your Leicester-area farm

This guide covers solar for UK agriculture from small mixed farms to multi-megawatt ground-mount schemes, and 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. Send the enquiry form and SEO Dons passes it to an installer covering your area; ask that installer for a desk-based feasibility study from your half-hourly meter data and roof drawings, with an indicative system size, generation forecast and payback figure.

If the numbers work, the installer covering your area should visit for a structural and electrical survey before issuing a written proposal with full yield modelling. A good installer will be honest if your site does not suit solar. Request your free quote and we will pass it to an installer covering your area.