Solar panels get €1,000/acre so what’s the catch?

Bigger projects would be connecting into 110kv, which is the national grid. Medium into 38kv, 20kv and 10kv which is the localised distribution network.

It's a massive capital investment to purchase land

It will also tell you that should solar go south in the morning they can up sticks & walk away

For them, if they bought the land, it would mean almost all their expenditure would be upfront. All that would be left would be security, maintenance and admin.

1500 an acre widely offered now in Wicklow and Wexford by one of the large JV operations

That's the equivalent of a minimum of €900 an acre after tax or €45k into your hand p.a index linked for 30 to 35 years

It's a serious offering

You actually get a lot more per acre of roof space, the difference is the costs are upfront

Back on page 1 of the thread I worked out that €1k/acre is something like 0.2c/kWh generated

Considering the FIT is hovering around 18-20c/kWh, that's a pretty poor slice of the investment pie

Now I guess to answer the question of why you couldn't just rent out your roof at a fixed rate, as others have said scale is important. The installation costs on 100 houses would likely be greater than an acre of land, and you can't just connect the whole lot into the grid, it's 100 NC6 connections

There have been companies in the US that did this, but you had to sign up to their electricity rates which often weren't great

Rooftop solar is generally better for self consumption, and in that regard it's excellent. Speaking from experience, my bills are down from €211 per month to €24, and that's including all of my heating and driving

But the flip side is you have to pay upfront for all the savings so there is a payback period. People go a bit mad about the payback period, and while it is important, it shouldn't discourage people

After all homeowners don't question the expense of an extension or a new kitchen despite the fact that they never pay for themselves

One thing that really bothers me is the measly 3-4 panels you see on new houses just to comply with the building regs. They really should be covering any roof space that isn't north facing in panels nowadays. It would make a big difference to the power consumption and energy bills of the new homeowners

Seller was robbed. Could easily have tripled that figure. And that would be just for ag purposes.

There's getting to be pushback in the UK on any more ag land being covered in panels. Solar companies here would know that too.

That land was bought for battery storage. Solar farms are only viable if hundreds of acres will be planted. The seller could have got 10k an acre per year. That's commercial land now.

Energy companies are signing options with farmers for lands neighbouring substations. Most looking to lease but if they can buy for 10k per acre they'd get it back in the morning if planning wasn't granted. For the farmer, half would go on tax but still a great income at that kind of money.

Land next to substation could be used for battery storage but the number of acres needed would be small. Any 5Mw solar farm requiring 25 acres is viable.

Specifically on a Greenfield site, as there seemed to be more objections to battery farms than solar farms

If you've read the thread, you should have realised that the economic viability of these installations is primarily down to proximity to market (direct customer or substation), not land area.

That's why battery storage is essential for solar to work

If your usage is 240kwh per day, with a fairly flat demand curve averaging 10kW, with a spike to 15kW during some daytime and a drop to 5kW a couple of night hours, the issue of solar fluctuation only occurs if you expect to cover a significant amount of use with solar.

In the above example lets say your solar input on a max day is 4kW but usually 2-3kW during summer and 1-1.5kW in the winter. You never touch the actual demand, so the base generation is always running. You only run into issues if you have to start turning off and on gas (or even worse, coal fired) power stations