Southill Solar held its first ever open day on Sunday, 21st June to celebrate the summer solstice and mark the solar farm’s tenth year of operation. About fifty people came on the Sunday. Another 20 or so members of the public had turned up the night before for a guided walk in the dark to observe moths and glowworms.
The solar farm, located a mile outside Charlbury, is run by Southill Community Energy, a community enterprise. Surplus revenues from the solar farm’s operations fund a community grants programme, which is administered by Sustainable Charlbury.
Positive reactions
The solstice celebration was a success, judging by the many positive comments received. One visitor, for example, described the open day as ‘the perfect way’ to spend her birthday, while another said it was ‘such fun and so interesting.” The weather helped – it was warm and sunny.
Southill Solar occupies a 19-hectare site. One third is taken up with solar panels. The rest is a nature restoration project. Over the last decade, what was once a dull expanse of arable land has been transformed into a haven for plant and animal biodiversity.
Lovely place for a picnic
Visitors were invited to walk through the site, bring a picnic and take photos. Volunteer experts were on hand to provide information. Anne Miller and Chris Beausire answered questions on the fauna and flora; Rowan Wynne-Jones demonstrated riverfly sampling and water quality testing (in the nearby River Evenlode); Christine Elliot explained the heritage orchard, Tim Crisp handled queries about the operation of the solar farm.
The site looks especially good in mid-summer. It currently presents as a sea of meadow grasses and ox-eye daisies. Closer inspection reveals a profusion of other plants including pyramidal orchids, mallow, knapweed and lady’s bedstraw.
Butterflies, moths and glowworms
The plants provide ample habitat for wildlife, including ground nesting birds, bees and butterflies. On the Sunday of the open day, our butterfly expert Martin Gascoigne spotted examples of 16 butterfly species, including two rare ones: the small blue and the white-letter hairstreak.
Night-time wildlife was also part of the event. On Saturday evening, moth enthusiasts Peter Cuss, Marc Botham and John Sampson arrived with specialist equipment to set up non-lethal traps. They stayed up most of the night and identified more than 100 moth species, including the strikingly named Beautiful Hook-tip, Setaceous Hebrew-character and Brown-line Bright-eye. Meanwhile, Anne Miller led visitors to see the moth traps in action and look for glowworms. Six glowworms were spotted on Saturday evening and nine on Sunday.
Parking is limited close to the site, so a minibus -running every half an hour- was laid on from Charlbury. Fittingly, it was an electric vehicle, supplied by Our Bus, a local community enterprise.
Not just about having fun
The summer solstice celebration was mainly about having fun, but it also provided an opportunity to mark what has been achieved at Southill Solar since it started operations in November 2016. The record includes generating half a million kilowatts of zero-carbon solar energy; running a successful onsite nature restoration project; and, paying out £500,00 in community benefit – more than £300,000 of which has gone to the community grants programme administered by Sustainable Charlbury.
‘The site was at its best, plenty of people came’ – Tim Crisp, Southill Community Energy board member
