Ground-mount solar: Breathing new life into tired agricultural land

All of Jersey Electricity's solar farm projects are designed to support and diversify opportunities for agriculture, while making the best of Jersey's status as the sunniest place in the British Isles ☀️

While we understand that there are concerns that solar farms might take land out of agricultural use, this cannot be the case. For each approved site, we sign up to a Planning Obligation Agreement (POA) with Government of Jersey. The POA is legally binding: it requires JE’s sites to be retained for agricultural use during the life of the installation and ensures agriculture must take place over the lifespan of the solar project.

☀️ Did you know? Across the totality of JE's planned solar farm projects, we use only 0.6% (185 vergées) of land that is classified as agricultural by GoJ (33,000 vergées). Today, around 27% of Jersey's agricultural land lies unused by farming.

☀️Solar panels only take up around 15% of a site's total area. This means only about 28 vergées of land (for the six projects) is actually occupied by solar panels.

This 0.6% of land will deliver around one third of the Island’s peak summer electricity demand. With JE’s support the land around the solar panels will play a role in helping local farming to diversify.

🐑 By combining energy and agriculture, we can make Jersey's land more productive. Partnering sheep grazing with energy generation provides a combined yield (known as land equivalent ratio) of around 130% and studies show that sheep on solar farms are happier and healthier.

From the sheep soon returning to our St Clement site, to the farming practices we’re working on with partners to develop, agriculture will flourish on our sites 🌱