Solar PV on the ground

You’ve heard about the benefits of solar PV, and you’ve decided that you want to take advantage of the savings and Government incentives. However, when a helpful installer comes to visit your property, you find that your roof just isn’t suitable. Perhaps you have too much shading from nearby trees and buildings, or perhaps your available roof space is simply too small to make solar PV viable.

All is not necessarily lost.

While your roof is an excellent location for a PV array if you can get it on, it doesn’t have to go there. If you have some land, a ground-mounted array might be the solution.

Indeed, you might have seen large-scale solar PV power plants springing up all over the UK. Quite a few were commissioned in July, as companies scrambled to beat the deadline that heralded a fall in incentives for industrial-scale (not domestic) PV installations.

The main advantage of siting your array on the ground is flexibility. You can normally point it in precisely the right direction and at the optimum angle. Maintenance is also a little easier, with modules close to the ground somewhat easier to clean, for obvious reasons.

The drawbacks are really only threefold:

1. Opportunity cost – Erecting a PV array on your land obviously precludes you from doing anything else with that land – roof space, on the other hand, doesn’t have too many alternative uses, unless you’re planning to extend. That said, if you have the land available, solar PV makes a lot of financial sense for a lot of people.

2. Building work – If you’re not fixing PV modules to an existing structure, then you’re going to have to build a framework on which to put them, as well as anchor that framework to the ground.

3. Planning – You will need planning permission in the UK, which you often don’t need for a roof-mounted system. This takes time, and means that anyone considering a ground array should probably start the ball rolling soon. Feed in Tariff incentives for systems installed after April 2012 will be somewhat lower than they are for systems installed ahead of that date – so it’s best to plan ahead!