Agriculture is one of the strongest sectors for commercial solar in the UK, and not by accident: the buildings, the loads and the economics line up. It’s also the sector where Novalux has delivered some of its largest programmes.
Why farm buildings work so well
- Roof area. Sheds, barns and stores offer large, simple, unshaded roof planes — the cheapest solar real estate there is. Mounting systems suit steel profile, fibre cement and standing seam without drama.
- Daytime loads. Ventilation, refrigeration, drying and processing run exactly when the panels generate — and self-consumption is what drives payback.
- Exposed energy costs. Farms feel electricity price volatility directly; generation on the roof is a hedge you own.
- Space for storage and ground-mount. Where roofs run out, farms rarely run out of land — ground-mounted arrays and battery cabinets site easily.
What batteries add on a farm
Farm load doesn’t stop at dusk — livestock ventilation and refrigeration run around the clock. A battery moves midday generation into those hours, shaves the peaks, and keeps critical loads up through outages, which for livestock operations is a welfare issue as much as a financial one. For remote buildings, off-grid design takes the grid out of the equation entirely.
What Novalux has delivered
Agriculture is our proving ground. The R.S. Cockerill programme put over 1MW of solar and 200kWh of battery storage across three Yorkshire farms — including Link Hall Farm, which runs off-grid-capable. Moonrakers Farm carries 271kWp across its poultry sheds. A Northamptonshire grain store integrates a 250kW battery with the site’s existing 550kVA generator. The full list is on the projects map — filtered for agriculture on the sector page.
Planning and grid, handled
Most rooftop farm installations proceed under permitted development, and we manage the DNO connection application from day one — the two admin items that most often stall farm projects when they’re left late.
Priced on your usage, not your roof
Send us your consumption data and we’ll size the system that pays back fastest — roof, ground-mount, battery or all three. Quick Quote within 24 hours; full proposal with 25-year cashflow within days of a survey.