ENERGY
Power struggles
Love them or hate them, solar panels are the future of green electricity generation, say some – and projects are springing up all over the UK in a ‘sunrush’. But would you want a 15-mile long solar farm on your doorstep?
by ANNA MOORE
‘If all the solar farms required to deliver the net zero targets are built, that would still be less than half a per cent of all UK land’
When a brochure dropped through Catherine Judkins’s letterbox announcing that a solar farm was coming to her area, she thought she knew what to expect. ‘It had the usual glossy images of glass panels with sheep grazing underneath and at first I just thought it was like the 20 or so we already have around here,’ she says. ‘They take up a couple of fields and are well accepted.’
It was only as Catherine read more deeply that she realised this was different. ‘It was 2,500 acres, almost 15 miles from start to finish, spanning two counties from West Suffolk to East Cambridgeshire where I live,’ she says. ‘This wasn’t sitting in the landscape – it was rewriting it.’
The proposed Sunnica Energy Farm would comprise more than one million solar panels 2.5 metres high and would, the company claims, power 172,000 homes. It also includes three large lithium-ion battery storage facilities, which, if approved, would be one of the biggest in Europe. Since 2012, more than 40 fires and toxic gas explosions have been reported at such sites across the world. ‘This means thousands of lithium-ion batteries side by side in shipping containers,’ says Catherine, ‘with the closest resident about 50 metres away.’