Specialist solar panel finance for farmers, and the four routes a farm can use
Farms buy capital equipment on finance every year, so the mechanics here are familiar. A solar array is a long life asset bolted to a building, and it is funded either from farm capital, on asset finance or hire purchase of the kind a combine goes on, under an operating lease, or through a power purchase agreement where a funder owns the panels and sells you the energy. What is unfamiliar is the property question sitting underneath all four, because a roof is not a machine and whoever controls it controls the deal.
4
ways a farm funds an array
25%
of eligible costs, Improving Farm Productivity grant
£15k to £100k
grant per business, that scheme
0
solar grant rounds open in England
Improving Farm Productivity grant round 2 applicant guidance, gov.uk. Round 2 is closed and the gov.uk funding for farmers, growers and land managers page lists no open successor as at September 2026.
How does a farm pay for a solar array?
A farm funds a solar array through one of four routes, and the choice between them is decided by who owns the asset, who claims the capital allowances and who keeps the energy it makes.
Those four routes are a capital purchase from the resources of the farm business, asset finance or hire purchase, an operating lease, and a power purchase agreement. Everything else offered is a variant of one of them. A grant, where one is open, reduces the capital cost inside whichever route you pick rather than forming a fifth route of its own.
The arithmetic that separates them is not complicated. Under a capital purchase and under asset finance the array ends up yours, so the generation, the export income and the allowances are yours too, and you carry the plant risk backed by the equipment warranties. Under an operating lease and under a power purchase agreement the funder owns the equipment, takes the allowances, carries the plant risk and prices all three into what you pay. Nothing is free in either direction. The question is only which party is better placed to hold each of those things.
On farms the answer turns on three things a commercial occupier never thinks about. Whether the business is a sole trader, a partnership or a limited company changes the tax position and the regulatory one. Whether the holding is owned or tenanted changes whether the roof can be offered as security at all. And whether the income is seasonal changes how the repayments are profiled. We take those three facts first and then look at routes, rather than the other way round, because much of the time the tenure has already decided the answer.
Nothing here is unique to agriculture, but the weighting is. A haulage yard choosing between the same four routes is choosing on cost of capital alone. Farms are choosing on cost of capital, on tenure, on the timing of the cash and on what the next generation is likely to do with the holding, and those last three are the reason farm solar projects are arranged differently from commercial ones even when the equipment is identical.
ROUTES
4
capital purchase, asset finance, operating lease, power purchase agreement
ASK YOURSELF
Do you want to own the asset, and for how long do you control the roof
FIG. 1 The four routes against the four questions that decide it
| Capital purchase | Asset finance or hire purchase | Operating lease | Solar power purchase agreement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the array | You, from day one | You, at the end of the term | The funder | The funder, for the term |
| Who claims the capital allowances | You | Usually you | The funder | The funder |
| Who carries the plant risk | You, with the equipment warranties | You, with the equipment warranties | As the lease sets out | The funder, for the term |
| What happens at the end of the term | Nothing to settle. It stays yours | Title passes to you | Agreed in the lease | Removal, buyout or extension |
- sits with you
- sits with the funder
- decided by the document you sign
Owning the asset
Buying the array outright from farm capital
What you own
A capital purchase is the route in which the farm business buys the array outright and owns the system from day one, along with every unit of energy it generates, the export income and the certificates.
There is no funder with an interest in your buildings, nothing registered against the title and nothing for a buyer's solicitor to raise if the holding changes hands. Over a long hold a capital purchase is almost always the cheapest route in total cost, because you are not paying anyone else for the use of their capital. On owner occupied farms with cash on deposit it is usually the right answer and the conversation is short.
The counter argument is the one every farmer already knows. Capital spent on a roof is capital not spent on land, on stock, on a new parlour or on the drier that is limping through another harvest. The comparison worth making is not solar against nothing. It is solar against the next best use of the same money inside the same business, and that is a judgement only you can make.
The tax position, in outline
HMRC treats solar panels as an integral feature of a building, so the expenditure goes into the special rate pool rather than the main pool.
Special rate expenditure can be covered by the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA), subject to the limit and to whatever else the business has spent in the same year, which on a farm is often a great deal. Where the Annual Investment Allowance is already committed to machinery, the balance is written down at the special rate instead. Partnerships and sole traders sit under a different regime from companies, and a farmhouse mixed with a farm building complicates the apportionment further. Our grants page sets out the tax relief position in full. Send the quote to your accountant and ask what the business can claim in the year of spend, because we are not qualified to calculate it and we do not.
SOURCE
HMRC Capital Allowances Manual at CA22335, on solar panels as an integral feature, checked September 2026.
SOURCE
gov.uk, capital allowances, for
the Annual Investment Allowance limit and the special rate.
Asset finance and hire purchase, the route machinery already taught you
Hire purchase is a form of asset finance in which a funder buys the equipment, the farm business repays it over an agreed term, and title passes to the business at the end.
It is the arrangement most farms already use for tractors, telehandlers, sprayers and parlour equipment, and the same funders write it against a solar array. There is usually a deposit at the start and a small option fee on the final payment. The appeal is that the business ends up owning the asset, the energy and the export income without the capital leaving on day one, which matters when the same money is wanted for land, for stock or for agricultural equipment that earns its keep sooner.
How agricultural lenders look at it
Funders lend against the covenant of the farm business, not against the panels, because a part used rooftop array is poor security. Expect the accounts to be read closely, expect the existing bank position to come up, and on smaller businesses expect personal guarantees to be asked for. If a personal guarantee is on the table, that is a decision for you and your solicitor rather than a formality to sign on the day of the survey.
Two features of agricultural asset finance are worth asking for by name, because they are common in the sector and rarely offered unprompted. The first is a repayment profile matched to farm cash flow: annual or biannual payments timed to harvest on an arable unit, or monthly payments on a dairy where the milk cheque arrives monthly. The second is a term long enough to sit sensibly against the life of the asset rather than against the life of a machine, since an array runs for decades and a sprayer does not.
Where it sits against a capital purchase
Asset finance does the same job as a capital purchase with interest attached. Over the full term it costs more in cash than buying outright and less in opportunity, because the money stays in the business doing something else. Whether that trade is worth making is arithmetic rather than judgement: take the total amount payable, subtract the cash price, and compare the difference against what the same capital earns inside the farm. Nobody can do that sum for you and any funder that claims to is selling.
ASK FOR
A repayment profile matched to the farm year, and the total amount payable over the full
term rather than the monthly figure
WATCH FOR
A personal guarantee presented as part of the paperwork rather than as a decision
NOTE
Finance and leasing to a limited company for business purposes is generally unregulated
business lending. We are introducers, not a lender and not FCA authorised.
Operating lease and rental on agricultural buildings
An operating lease is an agreement under which the funder owns the array throughout the term and the farm business pays a rental for its use.
Because ownership stays with the funder, the funder claims the capital allowances and prices that benefit into the rental. Terms are commonly shorter than a power purchase agreement and the commitment is easier to unwind, but the business is renting rather than owning, and where the export income sits depends on what the lease says rather than on a general rule. Read that clause specifically.
Whether the rental sits on or off the balance sheet depends on the accounting standard the business reports under, and IFRS 16 and FRS 102 do not treat leases the same way. Many farm businesses are partnerships preparing accounts on a different basis again. Anyone who tells you that leasing is automatically off balance sheet is describing an older set of rules. Ask your accountant how it lands in your accounts before you use that as the reason to choose it.
In practice an operating lease is the least used of the four on farms. It suits a business that wants the rental treated as a running cost and has no wish to own generating plant, and it is squeezed from both sides: asset finance is usually better where you want the asset, and a power purchase agreement is usually better where you do not.
Letting a funder own it
A power purchase agreement on a farm roof
A power purchase agreement is a long term contract under which a funder builds, owns and operates the array and the farm agrees to buy the energy it produces at a stated price per kWh for a stated number of years.
PPA stands for power purchase agreement, and the same instrument underpins utility scale renewable energy projects and a single roof in a farmyard, which is why the language in a rooftop proposal is borrowed from the wholesale energy market rather than from agriculture. On a farm building the shape is straightforward. The funder pays for the design, the equipment and the installation. The array sits on your roof under a lease or licence granted to that funder. You pay for the energy you draw from it, metered, at the rate in the agreement. Anything you do not use is exported and sold by the funder, including whatever the site earns under the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG).
Two consequences follow, and both shape everything below. You are buying energy rather than buying an asset, so the capital allowances belong to the funder and not to the farm business. And you are granting rights over part of a building for a long period, so a power purchase agreement is a property transaction as well as an energy one. On a holding that may be restructured, succeeded or partly sold inside the term, that second point is the one that matters.
Almost every farm rooftop deal of this kind is a private wire arrangement, in which the array feeds the building through a dedicated cable that never touches the public network, whatever the covering letter calls it. Because the connection is direct there are no network charges or levies on the units taken from the array, which is where most of the saving comes from. Sleeved and virtual agreements, which large corporate energy buyers use to fund remote solar farms and wind projects, move no power to your yard at all and are almost never the right instrument for a single holding.
SOURCE
The Smart Export Guarantee is an Ofgem administered scheme obliging larger licensed
suppliers to offer a tariff for exported units, checked September 2026.
WATCH FOR
A proposal that has drifted from your roof to a remote solar farm. Ask where the meter is.
FIG. 2 What moves, and which way, under a farm rooftop PPA
The downsides a farm should weigh before signing a PPA
Power purchase agreements are sold on genuine benefits: no capital, no plant risk, and energy at a known rate under a long agreement.
The other side is set out less often, so here it is together. Six points matter enough to put in writing before signature.
- You do not own the cheapest energy the holding will ever have. For the length of the term the generation belongs to someone else and you buy it back a unit at a time. Over a long hold that is the single largest cost of the route and it appears on no invoice.
- The allowances and the export income sit with the funder. So does the Smart Export Guarantee income and, unless the contract says otherwise, so do the renewable energy certificates that let a business claim the energy it used was renewable. That matters if you supply a processor or a retailer that asks about carbon in its supply chain.
- The roof is encumbered. The funder normally takes a lease or licence over the roof and registers it against the title. That constrains re-sheeting, alterations and anything else that disturbs the array, and it is disclosed to any buyer or lender for the length of the term.
- The rate moves. The unit price is usually indexed, most often to a published inflation measure, so it steps up each year rather than staying flat. A rate that undercuts your current supply contract in year one may not in year twelve.
- Exit is by formula, not by notice. Getting out means triggering a buyout or an assignment on terms fixed at signature, which is the subject of the next section.
- The contract is long and it is not standard. Two funders will send two very different documents for the same building, which makes a like for like comparison hard work.
None of that makes a PPA the wrong answer. For a farm with no spare capital, a heavy daytime load and buildings it will hold for decades, it is often the only route that works at all. It should be read by the solicitor who reads your property documents, not only by whoever reads the energy bills.
Getting out of a power purchase agreement
Buyout
A buyout clause is a provision that lets the farm purchase the system at a price set by a formula in the agreement and terminate the contract early.
Most agreements contain one. The price is fixed by that formula rather than negotiated at the time, and it is normally designed to leave the funder whole on the return it expected. Read how the formula is built, what discount rate it applies, and whether it is available at any point or only on set dates. This is the single clause most worth spending money on before signature.
Assignment on a sale or a succession
A power purchase agreement is written to survive a change of occupier. On a sale, a tenancy assignment or a succession the agreement passes to the incoming party, usually subject to the funder's consent and to a covenant test on them. If nobody suitable takes it on, you are back to a buyout. On farms this clause matters more than it does elsewhere, because holdings are restructured between generations more often than commercial buildings change hands.
End of term
At expiry the contract will already have fixed the options, and they usually amount to three: removal and making the roof good, purchase at a price or formula set out in the agreement, or extension on pre agreed terms. Ask who pays for removal, what condition the roof is returned in, and whether an extension is at your option or the funder's. These are cheap to negotiate at the start and impossible to negotiate at the end.
FIG. 3 The term, the indexed rate and the three ways out
The same markers as a list
| Point in the term | What is fixed there |
|---|---|
| Signature | The initial rate, the indexation mechanism, the term length, the buyout formula and the end of term options are all settled here. Everything below is read off this document. |
| Each indexation date | The unit rate steps up by the mechanism agreed at signature, most often against a published inflation measure. Ask for the worked schedule across the full term. |
| Buyout window | You pay the sum the formula in the agreement produces and take ownership of the system. Whether that is available at any point or only on set dates is written into the contract. |
| Assignment | On a sale of the building or a lease assignment the agreement passes to the incoming party, usually subject to the funder's consent and to a covenant test. |
| End of term | Removal and making the roof good, purchase at the price or formula set out in the agreement, or extension on terms already written down. |
Living with the agreement
Contract management is the work of living with the agreement once the array is running: reading the meter, checking invoices against the indexed rate, tracking availability against the warranty and keeping the paperwork where the next person running the business can find it. Nobody sells a PPA on its contract management and it is the part most often forgotten. Give one person the agreement, the meter readings and the indexation clause, and have them check a bill properly once a year.
Who controls the roof
Tenure, tenancy type and who actually controls the roof
The most common reason a farm solar scheme stalls is control of the building rather than cost, because a funder needs certainty about the roof for longer than the funding term.
This is the question we ask first, before the roof is measured and long before a quote is prepared. A tenant cannot grant a funder rights over a roof they do not own, and that single sentence rules out several routes on a large number of holdings. The four positions below cover nearly every farm in the country, and each one leads somewhere different.
ITEM
TENURE
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE FUNDING
A
Freehold, owner occupied
You control the roof outright, so every route is open. Check whether an existing mortgage over the holding restricts what may be fixed to the buildings or what security may be granted, because an agricultural first charge usually does, and the lender's consent takes time to obtain.
B
Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 tenancy
A lifetime tenancy with succession rights gives long occupation but not ownership of the building. Fixed equipment, landlord consent and compensation for improvements at the end of the tenancy all have to be settled in writing before a funder will look at it.
C
Farm business tenancy
Granted under the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 and often short. A farm business tenant cannot grant a funder rights over a roof they do not own, so any route that needs security over the building depends on the landlord joining in. Capital purchase and asset finance are the routes that survive a short term.
D
Contract farming or a grazing licence
Neither gives an interest in the buildings at all. The array belongs to the party that owns the roof, and the contractor or grazier buys energy from them if they buy it from anybody. Worth establishing on day one rather than at the funder's first question.
General descriptions of how these arrangements commonly work. Your tenancy agreement governs, not this table, and you should take your own legal advice on it.
Landlord consent, and the security a funder asks for
Landlord consent is written permission from the owner of the building both to the works themselves and to whatever long term security the funder wants over the roof, and the two are separate consents rather than one.
Consent to the works is the easier of the two and landlords rarely refuse it, because an array improves a building they own. Consent to security is harder, since it asks a landlord to accept a third party interest registered against their title for twenty years or more. A landlord who says yes to the first and no to the second has, without meaning to, ruled out the power purchase agreement route and left capital purchase and asset finance standing.
Four things are worth settling in the same letter. What happens to the array at the end of the tenancy, and whether the tenant is compensated for it as an improvement. Who is responsible for reinstating the roof if the equipment is removed. Whether the landlord's own mortgagee needs to consent as well, which on a let holding is common. And whether the landlord would rather fund the array themselves, in which case the array becomes the landlord's asset and the tenant buys the output, which is a power purchase agreement between landlord and tenant in all but name.
Where the farm is owner occupied but mortgaged, the same conversation happens with the bank instead. An agricultural first charge commonly restricts what may be fixed to the buildings and what further security may be granted, so the existing lender's consent is part of the critical path rather than a formality at the end of it.
TWO CONSENTS
One to the works, one to the security. Landlords say yes to the first far more readily than
to the second.
NOTE
We would rather establish this at survey stage than let a funder discover it in year three.
How a lender reads a diversified farm income
A funder assessing a farm business reads the whole income of the holding rather than the energy project in isolation, which works in favour of a diversified business more often than farmers expect.
Agricultural lending has always dealt with income that arrives unevenly and partly from outside farming, so a mixed set of accounts is normal rather than a complication. What a funder is testing is whether the business services the commitment through a poor year, not whether every pound comes from the same place. Contracting income, a let cottage, storage income, a farm shop or existing renewable energy projects all count as long as they are documented and durable. Funders that lend into agriculture see far more diversified farms than undiversified ones.
Two features of farm accounts do get examined closely. The first is the phasing down of delinked payments in England, which removes a line that used to look like a floor under the income and pushes funders to test the trading business on its own. The second is the split between farming profit and diversified income, because a business that is already substantially diversified is assessed more like a trading company than like a farm. Neither is a problem. Both are a reason to present the accounts with the diversified income identified rather than buried.
A solar array is unusual among farm investments in that it reduces a cost rather than producing a commodity to sell, and a funder reads it that way. It does not depend on a yield, a price or a buyer. That predictability is why renewable energy systems for farms are generally straightforward to fund when the tenure and the roof stand up, and why the survey rather than the accounts is usually the thing that decides it. It is also why renewable energy systems are financed on longer terms than agricultural equipment of similar cost.
One distinction is worth holding on to while reading any proposal. Rooftop energy projects on farms are small, they are consumed where they are made, and they are funded against the business that owns them. Ground mounted solar farms are large energy projects funded against a grid connection and a long offtake contract, and the money behind solar farms comes from infrastructure investors rather than from agricultural lenders. Agricultural solar on a building roof and a solar farm on the land are two different industries wearing the same word, and mixing them is the commonest way a farm ends up comparing offers that were never comparable.
PRESENT
Accounts with the diversified income identified, the existing facilities listed and the
tenure documented
What a funder asks a farm business for before it quotes
Funders ask a narrow set of questions and they ask them early, so having the answers ready is the difference between a quote in a fortnight and a quote in a quarter.
The list is short. Accounts for the business and the trading history behind them. Who owns the buildings, and if you do not, what the tenancy is and whether the landlord will consent to the works and to any security over the roof. Half hourly consumption data for the supply from your energy supplier, because the proportion of generation used on the holding is what makes the numbers work. The condition and remaining life of the roof covering, since nobody funds a twenty year asset sitting on a covering with five years in it. And the connection position with the distribution network operator, because an export limit that is refused changes the model.
We gather those during the survey so that one set of facts goes to every funder that is asked to quote. It keeps the process short and it keeps the answers comparable. Funders with the balance sheet to hold a twenty year asset are not short of enquiries, and the ones that answer quickest are the ones sent a complete pack rather than a postcode. Four versions of the same holding produce four quotes that cannot be compared with each other.
The sequence after that is the same whichever route is chosen, and it diverges only when the contracts do. Survey and measurement first. Then the yield model set against your own consumption. Then one pack to every funder. Then the G99 connection application running in parallel with the solicitors reading the finance documents or the power purchase agreement. Then installation and commissioning by our MCS-certified partner, who registers the system and hands over the certificate a supplier needs before it will pay under the Smart Export Guarantee. On most farms the whole thing runs three to six months and most of that is waiting on the network operator.
Grants, and what is actually open
Where a grant sits alongside the funding
A grant reduces the capital cost inside whichever funding route you choose rather than replacing it, so the grant question and the finance question are answered together rather than in sequence.
One English scheme has genuinely funded solar panels on farm buildings. The Improving Farm Productivity grant, a Defra capital grant administered by the Rural Payments Agency, paid 25 percent of eligible costs towards solar PV, batteries, inverters, meters and grid connections. The minimum grant was £15,000, which implies £60,000 of eligible costs, and the maximum was £100,000 per business. Its published round 2 guidance required the system to be mainly for farm power and required the panels to go on farm building rooftops, or on an irrigation reservoir including its floating cradle. Ground based arrays, residential property, replacement of existing panels and roofs that are north facing or heavily shaded were all excluded.
Round 2 applications have closed and no successor round is open. Two further points need stating plainly, because they are widely got wrong. The Farming Equipment and Technology Fund does not fund solar PV, whatever a third party round up of government grants says about farming grants. Farming in Protected Landscapes, which is open all year, does not list solar among its eligible items either. Countryside Stewardship capital grants fund a different list again. Where a business plans to apply for anything, the government's funding for farmers, growers and land managers page on gov.uk is the source to check on the day, and our grants page carries the published position on each scheme with its gov.uk reference.
The practical effect is that solar grants for farmers are currently a closed door in England and energy projects on farm buildings are being financed as ordinary capital projects instead. That is not a disaster. The productivity grants that did fund solar paid a quarter of the cost and required a competitive application against a deadline, so a great many holdings that wanted an array never got one even while a round was open. Financing the whole cost through the routes above is slower to pay back and far quicker to arrange, and it does not depend on a government scheme reopening.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own support and their own timetables, so an agricultural business outside England should check the devolved administration's own pages rather than the English ones. What is common across all four nations is that the two UK wide supports are not grants at all. The Annual Investment Allowance gives tax relief on qualifying expenditure in the year it is incurred, and the Smart Export Guarantee pays for the units exported. Both apply whether or not a grant round is open, and neither needs an application to a scheme. If a productivity grant does reopen, apply for it and finance the balance. Until then, financing the whole cost is what everybody in agriculture is doing.
SOURCE
25%
of eligible costs, minimum grant £15,000 and maximum £100,000 per business. gov.uk,
Improving Farm Productivity grant round 2 applicant guidance.
SOURCE
gov.uk, funding for farmers, growers and land managers, checked September 2026. No scheme
currently open in England funds solar PV.
ANNUAL INVESTMENT ALLOWANCE AIA
Tax relief on qualifying expenditure in the year it is incurred, subject to the limit and to
what else the business has bought. gov.uk, capital allowances.
SMART EXPORT GUARANTEE SEG
A tariff for exported units, which larger licensed suppliers are obliged to offer. Ofgem,
checked September 2026.
Choosing the route for your holding
The right funding route for a farm is decided by three questions, and none of them is about the panels.
Do you want the asset on the farm's own balance sheet, with the allowances and the energy that go with it? For how long do you control the roof, as owner or as tenant? And what is the capital you would spend on an array otherwise earning inside the business, against land, stock, machinery and the other calls on it? Answer those three and the route usually picks itself.
A PPA EARNS ITS PLACE WHEN
- There is no capital to commit and no appetite to own generating plant
- You hold the freehold, or tenure that runs well beyond the funding term
- The buildings run hard through daylight, so most of the generation is used on the holding
- The plant risk on the inverters and the monitoring is worth paying a funder to carry
IT COSTS MORE THAN IT SAVES WHEN
- The capital is available and there is no better use for it in the business
- The tenancy is shorter than the term a funder needs, or the landlord will not join in
- The capital allowances and the export income are worth more to you than to the funder
- You expect to sell or restructure the holding inside the term
Where the answers are cash available, long hold and no better use for the money, a capital purchase wins on total cost almost every time, and it is the only route that leaves the generation and the certificates in the farm's own hands. Where the capital is committed but you still want the asset, asset finance does the same job with interest attached and is the route most farms recognise. A power purchase agreement earns its place when there is neither the capital nor the appetite to own generating plant, and it is the only one of the four that turns the roof into energy you simply buy. An operating lease sits between the two and is chosen more often for how it lands in the accounts than for its total cost.
One thing does not change with the route. The array still has to sit on a roof that will outlast it, on a building the business controls, connected to a supply that will take it. Those three are settled at survey stage, and a funding decision taken before they are settled is a decision taken on assumptions.
Where we sit
What we arrange, and where the regulatory line sits
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges the survey, the design and the installation through an MCS-certified partner, and introduces farm businesses to funders who quote agricultural solar and power purchase agreements. We are not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and we do not give financial, tax or legal advice.
Finance and leasing to a limited company for business purposes is generally unregulated business lending, which means the protections that apply to consumer credit do not apply to you. That is worth reading twice on a farm, because many holdings trade as sole traders or as partnerships rather than as companies, and agreements with sole traders, small partnerships and unincorporated bodies can fall inside regulation depending on the size and type of the agreement. The funder will tell you which side of that line your agreement sits on, and you should ask them to put it in writing. Take your own tax and legal advice before you sign anything, from an accountant and a solicitor who know agriculture.
We do not publish case studies, testimonials or indicative rates, because we would rather show you the measured numbers for your own buildings than someone else's, and because a rate we have not been quoted is a rate we would be inventing. The material on this site is written for that purpose: the cost arithmetic, the survey method and the comparison between the funding routes, all of it free to read before you speak to anybody. We put the options and the measured numbers in front of you, and we tell you when none of them work on your roof.
Ask what the routes look like on your buildings
Send the postcode, roughly what is in the yard and roughly what the holding spends on energy a year. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and what a capital purchase, asset finance, a lease and a power purchase agreement each look like on those figures.
No survey fee and no obligation to proceed. We pass your details to our MCS-certified installation partner and to funders so they can quote. Introductions only, and generally unregulated business lending.
Questions farmers ask about paying for solar
- Can I get 0% finance for solar panels?
- Zero percent finance on a commercial solar array is rare and it is usually not what it appears to be. Where it is offered, the cost of the funding has generally been built into the price of the equipment rather than removed, which is the same arrangement seen on machinery deals every season. The test is simple and it is the only one worth running: ask for the total amount payable over the full term, then ask the same supplier for a cash price on the identical specification. The difference between the two is what the finance costs, whatever the headline rate says. We introduce you to funders and pass on what they quote. We do not set rates, we are not FCA authorised, and we do not give financial advice.
- How much do farmers get paid for solar panels?
- What farmers get paid for solar panels depends entirely on which arrangement is meant, and the two are not comparable. Panels on a farm building roof pay in avoided purchase: every unit used on the holding replaces a unit bought from an energy supplier at the full day rate, and the surplus earns an export tariff under the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), which obliges larger licensed suppliers to offer a price for units sent to the grid. Letting land to a developer for a solar farm is the other arrangement, and it pays an annual rent per acre under an option and a long lease rather than an energy saving. Our land page covers the rent, our cost page covers the arithmetic on a roof, and neither figure is one we would publish as a national average, because both are settled holding by holding.
- What farming grants are available in 2026?
- As at September 2026 the gov.uk funding for farmers, growers and land managers page lists Farming in Protected Landscapes as open all year, Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier as open, the Sustainable Farming Incentive window 2 as opening from September 2026 and the Farmer Collaboration Fund round 1 as opening on 1 September 2026. It lists the Improving Farm Productivity grant round 2, the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund, Capital Grants 2026, the Water Management Grant and the Slurry Infrastructure Grant as closed. None of the schemes currently open in England funds solar PV. Windows move, and that gov.uk page is the one to check rather than any third party round up, including this one.
- Can farms get grants for solar panels?
- One English scheme has genuinely funded solar panels on farm buildings. The Improving Farm Productivity grant, administered by the Rural Payments Agency, paid 25 percent of eligible costs towards rooftop solar PV, batteries, inverters, meters and grid connections, with a minimum grant of £15,000 and a maximum of £100,000 per business, and it required the array to go on a farm building roof or on an irrigation reservoir rather than on the ground. Round 2 has closed and no successor round is open. The Farming Equipment and Technology Fund does not fund solar PV, and Farming in Protected Landscapes does not list solar among its eligible items. Our grants page sets out the published position on each scheme with the gov.uk source for it.
- Is solar asset finance for a farm regulated by the FCA?
- Lending and leasing to a limited company for business purposes is generally outside the scope of Financial Conduct Authority regulation. That matters on a farm because a great many holdings trade as sole traders or as partnerships rather than as companies, and agreements with sole traders, small partnerships and unincorporated bodies can fall inside regulation depending on the size and type of the agreement. We are not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and we do not give financial advice. We introduce you to funders and pass on what they quote, the funder will tell you which side of the line your agreement sits on, and you should take your own tax and legal advice before signing anything.
- Can a tenant farmer put solar panels on the landlord's building?
- A tenant can put solar panels on a landlord's building only with the landlord's agreement, because a tenant cannot grant a funder rights over a roof they do not own. On a farm business tenancy granted under the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995, and on an Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 tenancy, the position has to be settled in writing before a funder will quote: consent to the works, consent to any lease or licence the funder wants over the roof, what happens to the array at the end of the tenancy, and whether it is compensatable as a tenant's improvement. Where the landlord would rather fund the array themselves, the tenant buys the output instead, which is a power purchase agreement in all but name. Take your own legal advice on the tenancy before you commit to anything.
- What happens to the array if I sell the farm?
- An array owned outright passes with the buildings and adds to what the holding is worth. An array on a power purchase agreement or an operating lease does not, because the funder normally holds a lease or licence over the roof that is registered against the title and disclosed to any buyer or lender. A buyer's solicitor will read that agreement, ask what the buyout costs and ask whether the obligation to keep buying the energy passes to them. Anyone who expects to sell or restructure inside the term should ask the funder for the assignment and buyout wording before signature rather than after, because both are fixed on the day you sign.
- Do I need a deposit for solar panel finance?
- Most agricultural asset finance and hire purchase agreements involve a deposit, and the same funders that write machinery paper usually apply the same expectations to a solar array. What is asked for varies with the covenant of the farm business, the term and the equipment, and it is quoted deal by deal rather than off a published table. A power purchase agreement and, usually, an operating lease need no deposit at all, because the funder is buying the equipment for its own account. We do not publish a deposit percentage because we would be inventing it.
- Will a solar array affect my existing farm borrowing?
- A solar array can affect existing farm borrowing in two ways, and both are worth raising with your bank early. The first is consent: an agricultural mortgage over the holding commonly restricts what may be fixed to the buildings and what further security may be granted, so a funder taking rights over a roof usually needs the existing lender to agree. The second is how the new commitment reads in the accounts, because a further monthly obligation sits alongside whatever facilities the business already runs. Neither is a reason not to proceed. Both are a reason to tell the bank before a funder asks them rather than afterwards.