Case Study

Stone Farm & Higher Maxworthy

The Client

Stone Farm is set in the beautiful countryside of Lifton in Devon, with Higher Maxworthy Farm being located in a similarly stunning setting in Launceston, Cornwall. Both owned by Rob Uglow, they are substantial dairy farms.

Late in 2018, IU Energy were asked to design Solar Photovoltaic (PV) arrays for both farms, to be placed on the roofs of two new purpose-built cow sheds, which were replacing the polytunnels which had previously housed the herds.

With two such large areas ideally placed for Solar PV arrays, the potential cost savings in energy were
anticipated to be significant. This case study deals mainly with Stone Farm, but the project for Higher
Maxworthy Farm and the benefits it is gaining are very similar.

The Challenge

Although seemingly straightforward installations for both farms, we were presented with two challenges.

The first being the need to complete the installations well before the ending of the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) in March 2019 and the second was installing these substantial arrays in the middle of calving time, when the farms were extremely busy and the possibility of disruption was high.