There is more than one way that solar energy can help power homes and businesses. One of them is through domestic solar panel installation, with panels on the roof to help individual homes benefit from a direct source of electricity. The other is to set aside land for solar farms with large arrays to provide energy to feed into the local or National Grid.

As solar energy becomes more prominent in the UK, both methods will have a part to play. But for residents of North Lincolnshire, the first option could be the simplest way of making sure they can benefit from solar power, without lengthy planning rows.

This may be a particularly salient point right across Lincolnshire. As such a large, mostly rural and largely flat county, it provides a lot of potential land on which solar panels could be located. But, as The Lincolnite reports, it isn’t quite that simple.

As the news site reports, Lincolnshire has a “solar dilemma”. This involves the collective prospect of 1.3 per cent of the county’s land area being given over to solar farms, which in turn could provide enough green energy to power the entire county.

This is not based on one vast site, but rather 12 different proposals that local planners will have to make decisions on. Put together, they would cover 9,109 hectares, the equivalent of London’s Hyde Park 62 times over.

Anyone who has been to Hyde Park will appreciate that 62 of those is a lot of land. And given there are many fewer than 62 applications, these arrays will be enormous. But Lincolnshire is a big county. Will the planners agree? Given the ferocity of some campaigners against solar panels, many will be at least wary of backing such plans.

Lincolnshire Live has also weighed in on this debate, posing the question itself of whether too many solar panels were planned for the county.

Last year, it noted how several determined pressure groups had emerged to oppose some of the proposed schemes, with common complaints including that the landscape was facing “industrialisation”, or that the loss of agricultural land could cause food shortages.

Among the groups mentioned in that article was the Mallard Pass Action Group, set up amid concerns about a solar farm planned for the location, near Stamford. Its logo is “Yes to solar, NO to Mallard pass”, which cynics might suggest is as close as it gets to saying “not in my backyard” without actually using those words.

Many of these campaign groups have been brought together under the ‘No Solar Desert’ umbrella, started by campaigners in the villages of Clayworth and Gringley, near Retford over the border in Nottinghamshire.

All this spells loud and lengthy campaigns, MPs with overflowing letterboxes, councils under pressure and public enquiries. That may mean at least some proposals being abandoned, delayed, or cut back.

For householders in North Lincolnshire who not only say “yes” to solar, but who don’t want to say no to it in their area, having it installed on the roof means it is possible to get the benefits of green energy without having to jump through so many planning hoops or face fierce local campaigns.

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