Bradfield brews up solar panel plan

A YORKSHIRE brewery is planning to spend more than £100,000 turning to the sun to make its beer.

Bradfield Brewery at High Bradfield in Sheffield, best known for its Farmer brand of beers, has applied for planning permission to fit 158 solar panels on the roof of its brewery and a storage building.

The photovoltaic panels would generate 30,000 Kilowatts of electricity a year, enough to power about half a dozen family homes.

The system, which will be installed by Hoylandswaine solar panel company Norcroft Electrical, should add up to £11,000 a year in saved electricity bills and Feed In Tariff from the National Grid.

Richard Gill, from the brewery, said: “It fits in with our ethos of using the best and most natural way of doing things.

“We already use water from our own borehole on the farm to make the perfect pint. Now we can harness the sun to help in that process.”

Bradfield Brewery, which is based at Watt House Farm, has brewed more than five million pints since the first beer, Farmers Bitter, was produced in 2005.

The farm had been in the family for three generations but falling farming income led to the decision to set up the ten-barrel micro-brewery.

That is now increasing to 40 barrels, an expansion that led to the decision to turn to solar power.

Watt House Farm is still a working farm with sheep, hens, goats, five shire horses, and two Percheron horses, who are used to pull the brewery dray at events like Bakewell Show.

“It’s what they call farm diversification,” said Mr Gill. “We are still very much a farm, but we needed to get an income from somewhere else too.”

Philip Mosley, director of Norcroft Electrical, said diversifying into making money from solar panels was an obvious next step.

“More and more businesses are seeing the advantage of using their roof space to not only save money but save the planet,” he said.

“For Bradfield Brewery it makes sense to fit solar panels because they have two large south-facing roofs.”