31 October 2012, Advice from property consultancy Carter Jonas has seen the installation of renewable energy schemes on two farms owned by Cambridgeshire County Council - one near Wisbech and one in the south of the county, in Milton.

As part of a framework agreement established in April of this year (2012), Carter Jonas is contracted as agent to advise the County Council on a range of rural property business matters. The deployment of the most cost-efficient and most suitable form of on-farm renewable energy was one of a number of priorities for Carter Jonas and the Council to consider.

Over the summer, assessments made by the firm’s renewable energy experts based within Carter Jonas’s energy & marine team in its Peterborough office resulted in a recommendation for the installation of solar photovoltaic (solar PV) energy schemes on what was, effectively, redundant scrub land of, circa, one quarter of an acre each at Maltmas Farm, near Friday Bridge, Wisbech and New Close Farm in Milton, north of Cambridge.

With Carter Jonas acting for the Council as advisers on the overall feasibility and quality control of the project in overseeing the installation by Lincoln-based renewable energy company, Freewatt, the two systems which total 93 kW (KiloWatts) - a 50kW at Maltmas Farm and a 43KW system at Milton - are now in operation and generating electricity to power various operations on each farm which is worked by a tenant farmer.

The systems cost £177,000 to install and have an anticipated pay back period of approximately eight years.