Planning permission has been granted for a solar farm on the Gloucestershire/ Worcestershire border. 

The 66.66-hectare site is at Home Farm, Twyning Road in Strensham, with approximately two-thirds of the site within Tewkesbury Borough Council (Gloucestershire) area and a third within Wychavon District Council in Worcestershire. 

The application from Northamptonshire Solar 1 Ltd is a joint application to both planning authorities.  

Tewkesbury Borough Council has given permission, but the application to Wychavon is still pending.

The site is made up of two parcels of land, the main proposed solar farm parcel and a smaller parcel for an electricity substation, connected by a corridor of land to provide a cable route to connect the two.  

It also includes a cable route from the proposed electricity substation to the National Grid substation on Bourne Road to the north. 
The solar farmis set to have a generating capacity of up to 49.99MW. 

The main part of the site, where the solar arrays will be installed, extends to approximately 54 hectares, comprising two rectangular agricultural fields in the north and part of a large irregular shaped agricultural field in the south. The fields are currently used for growing crops. 

The development will include a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) to provide a means of storing off-peak energy production and releasing to the Grid in peak demand periods or storing power from the Grid in periods of high supply but low demand. 

A new substation will be provided on land accessed from Twyning Road south of Upper Strensham. 

The finished solar farm will be capable of dual use farming, with small livestock, such as sheep, able to graze the land between the panels.  

The solar farm will be operational for 40 years, after which it will be removed and the land restored. 

Construction of the solar farm is expected to take eight months, and once complete and in operation, the development will have just 10 to 20 visits a year for security and maintenance. 

Work is set to begin on the development in the next three years. 

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