The home of Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle, will soon be solar powered and generating its own electricity.

The owner of Highclere Castle, where Downton Abbey is filmed, has been given permission to create a solar array to generate electricity for the castle.

Lord Carnarvon will erect five large solar panels which will generate electricity to power agricultural machinery. However, permission has only been granted on the condition that a native hedge is planted next to the panels. This is to ensure that the solar panels will not be visible from the road.

The solar farm will consist of three rows of 50kw grounded mounted solar panels. The local Parish Council objected to the plans but now that there is a condition that a hedge has to be planted, the chairman of the council said he was now in favour of the scheme.

Mr Cox said “I said if they approved it I would like to see planting so people could not see it from the road and that is what the borough council has done”.

As people become more accustomed to seeing solar panels it may become increasingly common for large concerns and businesses to generate their own electricity using sources of renewable energy. Solar panels are one of the easiest ways of generating electricity. Businesses can start to reduce their business electricity costs by installing such devices.

Even if business electricity prices stay the same, businesses may want to generate their own energy to help lower their carbon footprint. But by generating its own electricity a business can to some extent reduce business electricity costs, especially if any excess electricity is sold back to the grid.

Large country estates usually have the room to create small solar arrays and therefore Highclere Castle may not be the last estate we see with its own solar array.