How one solar farm is serving its local community well | Letter

Liz Reason says engaging the community with energy production can add great value and make nimbyism irrelevant

Barbara Chillman writes from Ramsden in Oxfordshire to say that opposing solar farms need not be nimbyism (Letters, 1 September). She could have cited a nearby existing solar farm, Southill Solar. It is in an area of outstanding natural beauty and won a Landscape Institute award for its design.

Southill Solar is a 4.5 megawatt solar farm operated by Southill Community Energy (SCE) for Charlbury and the surrounding villages. SCE is a community benefit society that pays its 400 members interest of 5% a year from its surpluses, as well as disbursing grants to the community for projects such as improving the energy and carbon performance of community buildings, funding a sustainability initiative with a local school and buying a polytunnel for a local agriculture scheme supplying fruit and vegetables.