Cil Lonydd Solar Farm

The deadline for objections ended 3rd February 2025

Thank you to all that that studied the information provided and made their objections known via our form. For anyone who signed up to our newsletter, we will keep you informed.

This application has been validated.
“Should you wish to comment on the application, your representation must be received by 03/02/2025”.

A solar photovoltaic electricity generating station (or ‘solar farm’) with an installed generation capacity of approximately 35MW and associated ancillary development, including battery storage. We are generally not against this project, except that the developer want to run its cables in a trench half way across the mountain, instead of accessing the pylons at the nearest location.

The 35 MW Cil Lonydd Solar Farm site is situated east of Newbridge and Crumlin, and south of Hafodyrynys and between the north and south sites for the proposed Trecelyn Wind Farm. The application includes ancillary equipment and battery storage

To the east is the large 13 turbine Mynydd Maen Proposal and a worrying aspect of the plan is to cut a 3km trench across the peat to join up with the sub station for that installation.


This faint drawing is an extract from the layout drawing for the site. There does not appear to be a clearer drawing within the documents.

The original drawing on the PEDW site can be seen here.

 

 


The route proposed for the cables across sensitive peat habitat

One serious concern over Cenin’s proposal is their plan to dig a trench for 3km across sensitive peat habitat to connect to  the substation proposed in The RES Mynydd Maen Wind Farm (which has not yet been validated by PEDW).

Although the trench is only 600mm wide and 1200mm deep the earth works required to do this will mean that a wide swathe of Peat across 3km of mountain will be disturbed. Massive diggers will be used and  there will have to be a temporary road necessary alongside and the spoil will have to be piled alongside too. It will be 5m offset from the public footpath.


One has to ask…

  • Why don’t they connect to the grid at a much closer pylon which would only involve a much shorter cable run alongside the existing road?
  • If they want to share access to the grid then the cables for the proposed Trecelyn Wind Farm actually follow the road past  the solar farm, why not share a grid connection with them? Instead the cables will  cross over the Trecelyn cables.
  • Is there really a good environmental reason to damage more peat habitat than necessary?


Choosing a route like this would require a much shorter cable run, alongside an existing tarmac road, and would cause far less damage to the mountain. The grid connection could be at the pylon at point A

So why wasn’t this specified in the application?