Looking to diversify your land use?
If you are a landowner thinking about hosting a renewable energy project, look at the information below and get in touch to speak to a member of our development team
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Benefits
Dual land use
Solar panels only occupy around a third of the land area, leaving lots of space in and around them. As well as receiving a rental income, it is often possible to graze small livestock such as sheep or operate free-range poultry.
Fostering biodiversity
Seeding the areas around the panels with appropriate grass mixes and wildflowers provides a habitat for bees and other pollinators and enhances the condition of the topsoil. Further opportunities may exist to strengthen existing field boundaries, create woodland habitat, and enhance the soil quality.
Diversification
Solar can provide an excellent way of diversifying your land management business by adding an index-linked income stream that is not linked to agriculture and requires little to no management. This provides an element of security to ensure the long-term sustainable operation of the wider farm.
All costs covered
Exagen cover all development and construction costs, and reasonable third-party costs (e.g. legal and agent fees). All we ask from you is that you meet with us regularly during development. We’ll construct and operate the project and return it to its original state (or better) at the end of the project.
Up-front payments
Upon signing an Option for Lease, Exagen will pay an Option fee.
Annual rental
We offer competitive rental terms which provide a long-term, inflation-linked income with regular payments to benefit your cashflow, negotiable to suit your business.
Interested? Get in touch
Solar can provide an excellent way of diversifying your land management business by adding an index-linked income stream
Site development
Exagen has a dedicated team focused on the development of solar farms, hybrid sites combining solar and battery storage and standalone grid scale battery storage systems. We work at all levels of project development from initial site identification, involving grid connection agreements and agreements with landowners, through planning and into construction and operation, including maintenance.
Careful site selection is the foundation of our business and we only develop sites that we believe are viable – having willing landowners, a financially acceptable grid connection and likely to receive planning consent.
Landowners are the cornerstone to our projects – alongside Exagen they are the constant for the project and ultimately are the ones that will live with the projects. As such forging and maintaining good relationships with landowners is the most important part of site selection and we ensure that we proactively keep landowners fully involved throughout the development process.
We work very closely with local planning authorities and the community to sympathetically design our projects to ensure environmental effects are minimised. Through the design process a number of surveys are conducted and the findings of these are collated and combined to ensure all environmental issues are full addressed.
Is my land suitable?
Grid connection
For both solar farms and battery storage systems, proximity to the electricity network, with sufficient capacity, is crucial to the viability of a project. Our development team will identify suitable connections as one of the first steps in looking for suitable land.
If your land is near to or beneath existing electrical infrastructure, including overhead transmission and distribution lines as well as substations then we would like to hear from you.
Location
Large, flat fields make the best solar farms, but with careful design it is also possible to work on undulating or sloping land, ideally well hidden with existing vegetation. We would also prefer to focus development on lower grade agricultural land, ideally grade 3b or below and also free of statutory environmental designations (e.g. National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Ecology and Heritage designations.
For solar sites, typically we require a minimum of 10 hectares (25 acres) from one landowner though we often look to work with multiple landowners in the same area to make a viable project.
For battery storage sites we generally look for 3-4 acres of disused brownfield land, though isolated greenfield sites can also be considered.
Lots of other factors need to be taken into account, and we will sit down with you early on to review the design options for your land.
Interested? Get in touch
Ideally sites will be flat, large fields with existing screening to the boundaries and on lower grade agricultural land outside of statutory environmental designations. Once in receipt of a potential site Exagen will carry out an initial desktop feasibility assessment to establish its suitability based on a number of different factors such as agricultural land classification flood risk, shading, visual impact and topography. if potentially suitable we visit the site to consider it in more detail and with the landowner’s authority, we also begin the process of establishing whether it is possible to connect the site to the grid.
In the UK, historically, there has been subsidy support from the Government for solar development. However, since 2015 the UK government has withdrawn subsidy support and with falling cost of solar infrastructure. Exagen is now building a pipeline of large-scale subsidy free solar projects in the UK, to capitalise on one of the cheapest form of electricity generation and consequently deliver lower energy bills.
The cost of installation remains broadly similar per megawatt for each site. However, the level of energy production and the cost of connecting to the power grid can differ considerably so the rent we can offer varies according to a number of key variables, including:
- Location – this determines the solar resource available and the solar value of the land;
- Aspect, shading and gradient – this has a bearing on energy production;
- Grid connection cost – this is a key variable in determining installation cost and time to connect, and;
- Ability to include battery storage as part of the development, which requires the grid to accept both the export and import of electricity.
As every site is different, we create a bespoke deal for each landowner. Should you wish to discuss your land, please call us, our development team is ready to discuss rental rates with you.
Many developers look to secure land, grid and planning and then sell the project at the construction stage. However, Exagen provides a single point of contact for the landowner through the entire grid/planning process and during the construction phase into the operational phase – we are a developer, builder, asset owner and asset manager. We work with a select number of planning and environmental consultants, including specialists in archaeology, landscape and ecology. This ensures a responsible approach to the development, while also guaranteeing the installation remains sensitive to needs of the local community and environment. We are a UK founded and UK backed business who cares about the communities we work with.
The basic lease we require is for 40 years, in order to recoup the capital investment and to generate sufficient financial return. It is therefore important that as landowner, you are comfortable with the long-term nature of our agreement. This does however provide a form of index linked income diversification for the farm over a long period.
The financial risks are minimal for the landowner – we will cover all landowner legal costs during initial discussions in agreeing an option agreement. We operate a straight-forward land rental agreement, bound by a contractual lease. The solar farm is set up as a separate company with its own legal identity, thereby ensuring it remains separate and distinct from any potential financial liabilities of Exagen. The rental agreement is with the individual solar project company; with a predictable level of energy generation, the operational risks for this company is low. A fund is set aside in the final years of the lease to ensure money is available for the decommissioning and reinstatement of your land to ensure that the land is return to the condition it was before the project.
We return your land to its current state by removing all components of the solar farm allowing the land to revert to its former use. This is not just a contractual agreement between you and Exagen but also is typically a prerequisite for the local planning authority to grant planning consent. Our panels are mounted on pile driven frames that cause minimum disturbance to the land and can be easily removed.
Any ground-mounted solar installation will require planning consent. Exagen manages this process, including preparation of the planning documents, meeting with the local planning authority and any interaction with the local community. Access to the land will be required for environmental surveys, used to inform the final design and assessments that are submitted with the planning application.
An application must be made to the Network Operator for approval prior to carrying out the installation Exagen manages this and we run this process in parallel with preparation of the planning application.