WORTHY FARM & GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL

THE CLIENT

WORTHY FARM & GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL

Worthy Farm is a working dairy farm located in the village of Pilton just outside Glastonbury. The farm is owned by Michael Eavis and managed by Steve Kearle. The farm is also home to Glastonbury Festival, one of the largest music festivals in the world.

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Our partners; Solarsense installed a 250kWp solar PV system for Michael back in 2010. At the time of commissioning the solar PV system on the Glastonbury Festival farm site was the largest privately-owned solar PV system in the UK. Installed on a commercial cow shed the original system helps to offset the dairy farm’s energy use.

THE TASK

LOW COST OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE

Due to a number of power outages, Worthy Farm had previously installed a solar PV monitoring system to identify faults and avoid lost revenue, however, due to the high costs involved they turned to RWG Solar for advice.

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One quarter of lost summer generation on a 250kWp system is more than 50,000kwh - the equivalent to £5000 in the case of the Worthy Farm system.

As Michael is often away from site his Farm Manager, Steve Kearle is often tasked with taking and submitting monthly solar PV readings to claim the farm's Feed-in Tariff payments. This can be a rather tedious process to say the least.

THE SOLUTION

METER-BASED MONITORING

Replacement smart meters were fitted by our qualified solar electrician in order to closely monitor the farms energy generation and identify any system faults. The smart enabled system also sends meter readings to Good Energy automatically in order to effortlessly claim the farm’s FIT payments.

An external GPRS aerial was incorporated in the existing steel cabinets of the inverter house in order to send the meter data back to the online portal without affecting the existing set up. The installation was completed in one afternoon and did not disturb the existing equipment (e.g. G59 relays).