Planning Advisory Service (PAS) Logo
Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
Open group | Started - July 2012 | Last activity - Today

EIA for commercial scale PV development

Tim Dawson, modified 13 Years ago.

EIA for commercial scale PV development

New Member Posts: 15 Join Date: 20/10/11 Recent Posts
Although I have a reasonable grasp of EIA regulations criteria for wind energy developments, can anyone tell me if there are site size thresholds for when an EIA might be required for commerical scale Photovoltaic developments? Since the introduction of FITs the Authority has received quite a few enquiries about this lately.
Former Member, modified 13 Years ago.

Re: EIA for commercial scale PV development

I was at an RTPI (southwest) gig yesterday and there was a fair dollop of stuff on this from burges salmon. You might want to come to your own conclusions, but some useful slides (based on recent case law) will be posted soon if not already. From memory, the answer (as always) is "depends". Depends on what the land was previously used for, method of mounting the panels, base, and also context - glare, connection to grid etc. Have a poke around on here in a few days: http://www.rtpi.org.uk/rtpi_south_west/
Former Member, modified 13 Years ago.

Re: EIA for commercial scale PV development

Presumably that kind of development would fall under para 3 (a) of schedule 2 ("Industrial installations for the production of electricity, steam and hot water"), in which case the threshold is 0.5 ha.