Renewable energy, strategic financial planning, rural diversification, grant funding
JMH Farming & Renewables (JMHFR) is a small, specialist, consultancy providing business advice for farmers and landowners in England and Wales. It is based in Wiltshire and run by James Miles-Hobbs and Rowena Cox.
James has been providing traditional farm consultancy for many years and has particular expertise in the provision and financing of renewable energy solutions for farms and estates.
Over the years he has given advice on many diversification projects and achieved significant grant funding for clients in both the farming and renewable energy sectors.
James was named Farm Adviser of the Year at the Farmers Weekly Awards in 2011. He is an active member of the Country Land & Business Association and sits on both local and national committees.
The client was faced with significant electricity bills on the main residence of a small country estate with no obvious solution to investing in solar PV, given the orientation of the roofs and the sensitivity of a listed property.
A commercial asset management company was tasked by one of their investors to review the installation of solar PV on a mixed range of commercial properties (cinemas, distribution centres, builders merchants, etc.) with a view to leveraging returns from existing commercial tenants by providing solar PV on the roof for on-site usage.
A Cornish Estate had a thriving business park and it had already installed 50kW of solar PV which was plugged into the main commercial tenant. They were keen to expand with a further 50kW but there appeared to be two problems. Firstly, there were no obvious users of large amounts of electricity and, secondly, the requisite grid connection upgrade was potentially prohibitive.