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

If your neighbours are getting the same as an acres payment they must have had a bad solicitor on their behalf the first day. And even worse that it wasn't index linked. But that's their own business.

Ive a neighbour with one about 150m from his house.

I asked about the noise- he said the days he hears it, he knows he’s making money.

our land is what’s called the Bermuda Triangle for turbines- we are surrounded but each of the 3 farms are spreading away from us.

I wouldn’t mind something.

as for the rent rates: it’s better than loosing it running cattle.

No none here tg, we wouldnt be in that zone, and far away enough from them that they don't bother us. Others are not so lucky.

Don't get me wrong, the money was good enough at the time, but from what I know, it wouldn't be a fair piece of the pie, and the farm organisations didn't want to know about representing landowners.

We farmers are price takers, and often our own worst enemies, nothing new there.

I’m about 2km from 3 turbine, one to east and two to the west and very rarely I hear them.

I'm just 400m from a large turbine, not on my land. Don't take any notice of it. The noise levels are what largely dictate distance. Wish my neighbour well on his good fortune. They have a bonus of a great internal road network. Solar farms in the US are getting farmers to run sheep on the land, best ground maintenance, win/win.

There's a large turbine farm bedside my bil,

It doesn't bother them at all, got half the price of solar panels and batteries plus €900 into a/c each year. Not a house they would be sitting out back sipping wine. There's another house that is beside 1 turbine and it drove them absolutely silly, sold up for small money, a polish couple live in it now and have no issues, all that said have been in a house east of the wind farm and some evenings the flicker is bad.

like I said we are surrounded by them.
there’s only one neighbour with issue and he originally came from Dublin with his American wife.

we had a dog kennel in the area at one stage and it nearly drove people cracked but not a word about the turbines.

Being surround by Sitka spruce with my horizon taken, I’d take turbines.

Unless a company had access to capital, it couldn't build either wind or solar, without a long term contract, against which to raise finance. Solar farms will do away with peak price at lunch time. The only peak then to be tackled is 5-7pm.

How small is the windfarm? Are they connecting to 20kV or 38 kV powerlines? Your project would have to be done in collaboration with the windfarm and likely would not be able to produce to its maximum capacity either as it may have to cap its output on windy days. The windfarm has a specified lease and planning timeframe left to run. You would have to fit in with that timeframe. It's a difficult venture to negotiate and very tight financially.

i think its very dependant on esb infrastructure in the area and proximity of substations etc.

Think it's generally well over a million per installed mw as a rough guide. Proably depends on the site, access and the smaller the build the bigger the costs. Are you beside a substation? If not probably forget about it. Any second hand turbines being taking down of that size will be worn out. A 2.5mw will be between 60-80m high and 40m blades or maybe a bit bigger. To get a loan you need the wind speed recorded for a certain amount of time..think 8ms is where it needs to be or higher.

1 kW for 1 hour is 1 kWh or one unit of electricity. Many kitchen kettles would be about 2 kW. A microwave oven about 0.8 kW.

On average, across the country, households use electricity at a rate of about 1-2 kW total across the year.

So, a 1 MW wind turbine would power 500-1000 households. However, wind doesn't blow (adequately) all the time, so realistically it might power 200-400 households.

The access road needs to be good enough to take a crane that might weigh about 100 tonnes. No sharp bends.

"The grid connection for the project will be the same cost be it 1 or 5 units erected."

Not quite. The local system might tolerate a 1 MW generator being added (possibly with minor augmentation), especially if there is local demand and the location is partway along the main 10 or 20 kV line. That might not be the case with a larger installation. There are a huge number of single generator locations in the UK.

While the digging of trenches or the erection of poles might be much the same cost regardless of voltage (there will be incremental changes like different spacings), the cables themselves will be different and the equipment will be more sophisticated with a larger operation.

Did ye even get a chance to talk money?

There's supposedly a 400 acre solar farm going for planning not far from here. Alot of uproar but if people want sustainability etc I don't get all the backlash. Alot of not in my back yard stuff.