The Barlavington Estate near Petworth is a 3,200 acre diversified rural business which embraces agriculture, woodlands, residential and commercial property. It is a picturesque estate in the South Downs National Park with a keen focus on environmental management.

The owner of the estate is on the board of the National Park Authority and is well liked locally for his work in restoring local heathland and for organic farming. He has always been keen on embracing low-carbon energy options and hired ReEnergise to assess opportunities for managed energy infrastructure for the benefit of the tenants and the estate itself.

We have provided feasibility reports for a number of renewable energy options for the estate assessing the long-term potential for a managed energy programme on the estate.

So far, we have carried out two solar PV installations:-

• The first was an installation of 115.kW solar PV for the provision of solar power generation to a rural milking parlour. This project has a forecast payback of 4.5 years and total net benefit of over £460,000 over 20 years.
• The second, recently completed, was an installation of 49.95kW solar PV system for a small cluster of tenanted commercial farm buildings. The system now provides zero carbon electricity to the tenants as well as generating revenues for the Estate from the FiT (Feed-in-Tarriff). This project has a forecast payback of 8.4 years and total net benefit of over £125,000.