A German baron has upset his neighbours by pushing through with plans to build a “solar farm” in a beautiful part of the Oxfordshire countryside.
The solar panels will cover 29 acres — equivalent to 18 football pitches — on the Shelswell Park estate near Bicester. It will produce enough electricity to power 1,000 homes and is believed to be the largest solar farm planned in England.
The simple television folk in Lark Rise to Candleford would never understand the prospect of harvesting sunshine instead of swedes but the estate — the model for the squire’s Skeldon Park in the books by Flora Thompson on which the series is based — already has a roaring trade in providing woodchips for bio-energy.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/...icle657094.ece
The farm is next to a lake and one resident, who has lived locally for 40 years, said wild birds, including swans, flying overhead “will mistake the shiny surfaces for water with terrible results”.
The solar panels will cover 29 acres — equivalent to 18 football pitches — on the Shelswell Park estate near Bicester. It will produce enough electricity to power 1,000 homes and is believed to be the largest solar farm planned in England.
The simple television folk in Lark Rise to Candleford would never understand the prospect of harvesting sunshine instead of swedes but the estate — the model for the squire’s Skeldon Park in the books by Flora Thompson on which the series is based — already has a roaring trade in providing woodchips for bio-energy.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/...icle657094.ece
The farm is next to a lake and one resident, who has lived locally for 40 years, said wild birds, including swans, flying overhead “will mistake the shiny surfaces for water with terrible results”.
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