As well as being an arable farm, Huntsmill is one of the leading wedding venues in the area. With their newly converted barn, the wedding, the reception and plentiful accommodation are all on site and the Buckinghamshire countryside provides the magical setting couples are looking for.

All this activity consumes a lot of electricity, and farmer Henry Hilsdon has been looking to the future to manage costs.  Powersun installed a 25kWp solar array in a field to the south of the farm yard at the end of 2020, and this has recently been upgraded to 50kWp. It’s estimated that this will provide more than half the venue’s electricity requirements.

The array was installed using Powersun’s proprietary ground mount racking system, with panels from Tier 1 manufacturer J A Solar, and Solis inverters. Export has to be controlled as the local network imposed a limit, and this is looked after by the Solis Export Manager.

With energy prices now rising rapidly as a result of gas and global instability, direct wire systems like this can provide huge energy savings, with lifetime costs at under 5p a unit and payback times dropping well under 5 years.

At the same time Huntsmill are reducing ntheir CO2 output by more than 10 tonnes a year, helping the country to reach the Zero Carbon 2050 target.