East Stour Solar Farm

Application submitted

We are pleased to have submitted our planning application for East Stour Solar Farm to Ashford Borough Council.

We held two rounds of public consultation during the summer and autumn of 2021. The comments received during both rounds have led us to make a number of design changes including reducing the size of the solar farm and adding additional planting around its boundary.

Further environmental information has been submitted and Ashford Borough Council will now decide whether to approve the proposals, a decision is expected later this year.

The proposed solar farm would be located on farmland south of the M20 and northeast of Aldington. If constructed, it has the potential to generate up to 49.9MW of renewable electricity, enough to meet the equivalent needs of approximately 16,900 homes in the Borough of Ashford every year*.

Our battery storage team, Pivot Power, is continuing to progress its proposals for a battery energy storage system on land between the proposed East Stour Solar Farm and Sellindge substation. This will be the subject of a separate planning application that will also be submitted to Ashford Borough Council in the near future.

* Based on European Commission, Photovoltaic GIS (PVGIS-SARAH) initial site production estimate and average domestic electricity consumption per Ashford Borough Council household (DBEIS, 2020). Numbers presented to three significant figures.

Our application documents can be viewed on the Ashford Borough Council website by entering the reference number AS/22/00668/AS

The documents can also be viewed at the end of this page.

If you have any questions, you can contact the project team directly by calling Freephone 0800 0194 576 or by emailing east.stour@edf-re.uk.