Energy infrastructure

Solar is no different to any other medium-term change of use on a farm. The farm remains "a farm" for all legal purposes until more than half of the land is used for "not farming". If you have a typical 50-100 acre small farm, and put 5 under solar panels (that's a lot of solar panels!), it will not affect your status as a farmer.

Solar is also a very good option for upland sheep farmers. Raise the panels about 1.5 m off the ground on the rockiest part of your holding, where there wasn't much grazing, and the panesl provide shelter to your sheep, plus an additional income.

ABP gave the go ahead to a solar farm near clonea power in the summer. Looks sizeable.

There's another site which received approval but has never been built. It's close to the welcome inn on the N72 near modeligo.

It doesn't preclude it. But it rarely makes financial sense to increase the installation costs and maintenance costs just to free up a few hectares for sheep grazing. There's no end of unproductive land where sheep can be and are grazed effectively for free.

Existing agricultural roofs (or any other sort of roof) are not great places for solar panels, in my opinion. There simply isn't enough area to start, most are unsuitable in one way or another (in tree shadow, not structurally capable, too-difficult to access, too steeply pitched, etc). In many cases, if you really want clearance between the ground and your solar panels, it would be cheaper to build a completely new structure to hold the panels than try to fit them to existing barn roofs and the like.

You need to look at the numbers - people have an inflated idea of the commercial value of agricultural land or any land - i.e. the rental value. Solar panels are cheap - adding complexity to their installation destroys the value proposition.

In theory we could use existing roof-tops for all sorts of things - but that doesn't mean we should. Given the finances, at this stage, it makes about as much economic sense to try to commercially grow roof-top potatoes by retro-fitting roofs with planters as it does putting solar panels on roof. It might even be cheaper 😁

Wind providing 4.8% of current demand here.

Loads more renewables hype should soon fix that, though.

Which is why we should have a bit of everything. Residential use is approx 25% of grid demand and residential PV doesn't take up any agricultural land.

I would imagine there wouldnt be much grazing if the solar panels are shading the ground and limiting growth.

But I like your idea

Yup, shocker wind turbines provides no energy on calm days,

also my oil boiler doesn't work when the oil tank is empty ,

This is not shock news - wind is non dispatchable and intermittent,

There's 2 ways of looking at it , either wind is there to lower the gas bill ,

Or Gas is there to back up wind power ,

It's part of the system,

All island all time system demand record was broken yesterday evening, 7051 MW at 17.30.

Except that solar reduced the hydro and gas output while it was producing. Reducing hydro demand saves a dispatchable renewable resource for a time it is in need. Reducing gas demand reduces fossil emissions and dependence on foreign powers. To avoid all doubt, these are good things.

The second half of your post outlines you know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. There's no point knowing the costs if you don't also know the value they provide to the system.

I couldn't find my keys last week, and so I was late for an appointment. Damn that Eamon Ryan!