From the Chamber: Barkham Solar Farm

Barkham Solar Farm is an all round good news story for all of our residents in the Wokingham Borough Council area and last week, we signed the contract to start building it. Residents around Barkham will see the work starting later this year and it will progress through next year, with its initial connection expected in late 2027.

This project has the triple advantage of helping us get nearer to our Climate Change targets of carbon neutrality, helping to provide cheaper electricity for our schools, libraries and the other Council services that our residents use. It will also generate revenue for the Council by providing any excess of clean energy to the grid for everyone across the country to use – making Britain more independent from fossil fuels.

With what has been happening in the gulf and with oil prices around the world, I think anyone can see which way fossil fuel prices are going and most importantly, on the back of one of the hottest, driest summers we have ever seen here in the UK - it’s pretty clear that Climate Change is not going to wait.

This is a 40 year community project, with a detailed business plan that certainly has more than enough latitude to accommodate some flexibility, if we need it - and If Solar farms are no longer needed in the future, it would be very easy to turn the land back to food production, if that is what we need.

Eventually we will see over 43,000 panels in this location, which are expected to generate enough electricity to power almost 10,000 homes and we should see energy starting to being fed back to the grid from September 2027. Most of the quality panels out there are still going strong after 30-40 years. We would expect there to be changes over the life time of the project, as the technology evolves, but I think we can look forward to a promising future with our energy production.

- Councilllor Imogen Shepherd-Dubey, Executive Councillor for Finance and Governance