Cumbrian AD Plant Should Generate Electricity For 1,000 Homes
An anaerobic digestion (AD) plant is being built on a farm in Cumbria and once completed it should generate sufficient electricity for 1,000 homes.
The AD plant is estimated to cost around £3 million and is being constructed on a farm near Silloth in Cumbria. The source of renewable energy will generate 1.2MW of electricity and help boost the Cumbrian economy.
The developer, Farmgen, specialises in AD plants and hopes the development at Silloth will lead to further AD plants across the region. They say that the initial investment will be paid back within about 7 years.
The non-executive director of Farmgen, Simon Rigby, said “AD is a great opportunity to give farmers certainty of income because you have to feed an AD plant for 20 years with farm crops”.
Another Farmgen project in Lancashire has just signed a deal to supply Marks & Spencer. This is part of Marks & Spencer’s plan to get more of its electricity from sources of renewable energy.
Farmers are looking at getting involved in a number of different sources of renewable energy as they try to take advantage of the Feed-In Tariff scheme. Some farmers are installing solar panels on cow sheds while others are putting up wind turbines in their fields. They all provide a more stable source of income as farming becomes increasingly unpredictable.