LIT_121: Page et al. (2024), Future of Solar Farming in NZ (NZIPIM Journal); NZ ~1.5 ha per MW land rule

LIT_121: Page et al. (2024), Future of Solar Farming in NZ (NZIPIM Journal); NZ ~1.5 ha per MW land rule

Source

https://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/handle/10182/18190 — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)

Page, de Koning, Tozer & Ramilan (2024) — The Future of Solar Farming in New Zealand

The NZ ground-mount solar land-use rule-of-thumb: ~1.5 ha per MW of ground-based solar (approximately). A short authoritative NZ sector article (Lincoln + Massey academics, NZIPIM Journal Sept 2024) that anchors three NI parameters: the land-footprint of ground-mounted PV (1.5 ha/MW ≈ 667 kWp/ha total-site), panel degradation (90% of nameplate at 25 years), and the levelised-cost trajectory (ground-based solar LCOE fell 89% over 2009–2019, now the cheapest generation with wind close behind). Also documents where NZ solar is going (68 farms / 5,300 MW as of June 2024; ~half on Class 1–3 highly productive land), grid-connection economics ( 100k/km overhead 33 kV lines, 500k/km underground), the consent environment (NPS-HPL, NPS-REG, Fast-track), and agriculture within solar farms (grazing dominant; sheep/pigs/calves; cattle incompatible; elevated >5 m cropping PV trialled overseas but costs more). NZ-specific; data_quality: high.

Summary

A five-page article in the September 2024 NZIPIM Journal (the professional journal of the NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management), authored by Shannon Page (Senior Lecturer, Environmental Management, Lincoln University), Wim de Koning (Co-Director, Transformative Agribusiness Centre of Excellence, Lincoln University), Peter Tozer (Professor, Farm Management, Massey University) and Thiagarajah Ramilan (Associate Professor, Agribusiness, Massey University). It surveys the drivers, scale, location and timing of NZ solar-farm growth, the consenting environment, and the implications for farmers and landowners. For Neobiome Intelligence its value is a small set of authoritative NZ sector figures for the D01 renewable-generation layer: the land-use footprint of ground-mounted PV (the “1.5 ha per MW” rule-of-thumb, quoted approximately), the module-degradation assumption, the levelised-cost trajectory, and grid-connection cost per km — plus the NZ regulatory context (NPS-HPL / NPS-REG / Fast-track) and the agriculture-within-solar-farms picture that bridges to the agri-PV pathway (agro_pv). Read verbatim from the published PDF; figures are source-verified, so data_quality: high despite being a professional-journal (grey-literature) venue rather than a peer-reviewed one.

Key claims

- claim: "THE NZ LAND-USE RULE (the load-bearing NI figure): 'A 2023 generation investment survey by Concept Consulting estimated that around 8,500 MW of solar would be added to the grid by 2027. This addition equates to a 90% increase in total installed generation capacity. Given that 1.5 ha (approximately) is required for 1 MW of ground-based solar, this amounts to around 13,000 ha of land in solar farms.' → 1.5 ha/MW ≈ 667 kWp/ha TOTAL-SITE footprint (derivation from the verbatim ratio, NOT in the source; includes spacing/access/setbacks, hence lower than array-only density)."
  source_location: "p.2, section 'Solar uptake in the future' (para. 1)"
- claim: "CURRENT NZ SOLAR SHARE: 'In New Zealand, solar energy currently makes up around 1% of total generation, with other renewable energy making up 87%.' (Stated twice — as a pull-quote and in the body.)"
  source_location: "p.2, pull-quote + section 'Solar uptake in the future' (para. 1)"
- claim: "PROJECTIONS RISING FAST: 'Earlier in 2023, Transpower (owner and operator of the national grid) projected 7,300 MW of grid scale solar by 2030, but just three years before that its estimate was a mere 1,000 MW. The rapid rise in solar has been unexpected, even to those in the electricity industry, with estimates increasing year on year.'"
  source_location: "p.2, section 'Solar uptake in the future' (para. 2)"
- claim: "LEVELISED COST TRAJECTORY: 'The levelised cost of electricity (electricity produced over the lifetime divided by total costs) from ground-based solar fell 89% between 2009 to 2019. This makes it now the cheapest form of electricity generation (with wind being a close second).'"
  source_location: "p.1, section 'Drivers of solar growth' (col. 2)"
- claim: "MODULE DEGRADATION + LEASE LIFE (NI derate inputs): land is typically 'leased to the developer for a fixed term (25 to 30 years)'; and 'Solar panels do degrade over time - at the end of 25 years, the power generation would typically be 90% of when it was first installed so solar farms will at least remain in place longer than typical lease contracts.'"
  source_location: "p.4 (lease 25-30 yr, section 'The value of solar to farming') + p.5 (90% at 25 years, section 'Solar farm growth set to increase' preceding paras)"
- claim: "CONSENT COST/TIME + FAST-TRACK PIPELINE: 'Obtaining resource consent for a solar farm can cost between $100,000 and $200,000 and take at least a year from concept to consent.' And under the COVID-19 fast-track process: 'Five solar farms projects have been approved through this fast-track process, with a further 13 in the assessment/processing stage.' The amended NPS-HPL was 'announced and taking effect from 16 August 2024.'"
  source_location: "p.2 — consent cost (col. 1, para. before 'National policy statements'); NPS-HPL effect date (col. 2, 'National Policy Statement on Highly Productive Land'); fast-track counts (col. 2, 'Fast-track legislation')"
- claim: "WHERE NZ SOLAR IS GOING: Figure 1 maps 'the location and size class of 68 proposed, consented and operational solar farms based on information in the public domain as of June 2024. The combined capacity of these solar farms amounts to 5,300 MW.' And: 'Almost half of all the ground-based solar panels are set to be built on highly productive land - either Class 1, 2 or 3.'"
  source_location: "p.4, section 'Proposed locations' (paras. 1-2) + pull-quote"
- claim: "GRID-CONNECTION COST (remoteness/siting economics): large solar farms must connect to the high-voltage transmission network and 'the cost of building new transmission lines is substantial (i.e. $100,000/km for overhead 33 kV lines - or $500,000/km if underground), then locating a solar farm close (or in many cases next to) existing infrastructure is highly desirable.' Smaller farms (typically <10 MW) 'can be connected directly to the local lines network so there is more flexibility in where they are located.'"
  source_location: "p.4, section 'Proposed locations' (para. 3)"
- claim: "AGRICULTURE WITHIN SOLAR FARMS (the agri-PV bridge): 'The most widely practised productive use of solar farms is animal grazing... Sheep are primarily used, but pigs and calves have also been used within solar farms in New Zealand. Fully grown cattle are incompatible with solar farms as they cause damage to panels and supporting infrastructure.' Elevated cropping PV: 'PV systems that are raised far off the ground (greater than 5 m allowing normal agricultural practices for a range of crops to occur beneath) have been trialled overseas. However, the cost of such systems is considerably more than a standard array.' And the value case: 'the value obtained from electricity + primary production is higher that either electricity or primary production on its own.'"
  source_location: "p.4 — grazing/livestock (section 'Agriculture within solar farms'); elevated PV (same section, later paras); electricity+production value (section 'The value of solar to farming')"

Neobiome Intelligence relevance

This is a compact source of authoritative NZ sector figures for the D01 renewable-generation layer (D01). Three figures are model-relevant:

• Ground-mount PV land footprint — the NZ rule-of-thumb. “1.5 ha (approximately) is required for 1 MW of ground-based solar” is the NZ industry rule for the total-site footprint (arrays + inter-row spacing + access + setbacks). Reciprocal ≈ 667 kWp/ha total-site (derived). This is directly relevant to the model’s interim ground-array density pv_ground_kwp_per_ha (150, per RT_304): the NZ rule-of-thumb is ~4.4× denser than that interim value (150 kWp/ha ≈ 6.7 ha/MW), so the interim constant looks far too land-hungry against sector practice. The total-site vs array-only distinction matters: other solar sources in the corpus (Bolinger array-only ~870 kWp/ha; the solar-land-use compiled research) bracket the range, and this NZ total-site figure sits at the conservative (spacious) end of the array-only band, consistent with it being a whole-site number.
• Module degradation: “at the end of 25 years, the power generation would typically be 90% of when it was first installed” → a ~0.4%/yr linear derate assumption for PV lifetime energy yield.
• Levelised cost: ground-based solar LCOE fell 89% (2009–2019), now the cheapest generation (wind close second) — corroborates the model’s least-cost-generation ordering and the NZ solar LCOE evidence already on D01.

Secondary but useful: grid-connection cost (100k/km overhead 33 kV, 500k/km underground) feeds the remoteness/grid-connection premium; the agriculture-within-solar material (grazing dominant, cattle incompatible, elevated >5 m cropping PV costs more) bridges to the agri-PV / agro_pv pathway and complements the agri-PV under-panel-yield evidence; and the regulatory context (NPS-HPL specified-infrastructure gateway, NPS-REG, Fast-track) aligns with REG_009.

Retrieval provenance

• Upstream source: Page, S., de Koning, W., Tozer, P. & Ramilan, T. (2024) ‘The Future of Solar Farming in New Zealand’, NZIPIM Journal, September 2024, pp. 7–11. Authored by Lincoln University (Page, de Koning) and Massey University (Tozer, Ramilan) academics; corresponding author p.tozer@massey.ac.nz.
• Located by: a retrieval pass on 2026-07-25.
• Read: verbatim, via pdftotext -layout on the downloaded published PDF (5 pp). Unlike a typical AI-prepared raw, every figure in key_claims is quoted directly from the authoritative published primary and carries an exact source_location — the values are source-verified, not AI-extracted-and-unverified.
• Verification status: data_quality: high — a directly-read authoritative NZ primary. The one non-verbatim number (667 kWp/ha) is an explicit derivation from the source’s own 1.5 ha/MW ratio, flagged as such. sha256 verified against the raw (e6583269…).

Research targets

No new research targets opened. This source advances the ground-array-density leg of RT_304 — the NZ total-site rule-of-thumb (1.5 ha/MW ≈ 667 kWp/ha) is a real NZ calibration point for the interim pv_ground_kwp_per_ha (150) — but RT_304 is a compound target (three interim roof/ground factors) and stays OPEN. The gap that remains is a modelling decision to re-set pv_ground_kwp_per_ha against the sector rule-of-thumb, not a new document to retrieve.

Documents to retrieve

• None.

Research gaps

• Reconcile the model’s interim ground-array density pv_ground_kwp_per_ha (150 kWp/ha ≈ 6.7 ha/MW) against this NZ rule-of-thumb (~667 kWp/ha total-site) and the array-only figures — folded into the open RT_304, not a standalone new RT.

Notes

• source_type = grey_literature. The NZIPIM Journal is a professional-institute journal (editorially, not double-blind peer-reviewed), so grey_literature is the honest classification even though the authors are Lincoln + Massey academics and the LIT_ prefix is retained. data_quality: high reflects that the figures are authoritative NZ sector numbers (citing Concept Consulting 2023 and Transpower) read verbatim, not the venue’s review status.
• 1.5 ha/MW is “approximately” and TOTAL-SITE. Do not treat 667 kWp/ha as precise; it is a rule-of-thumb whole-site figure (arrays + spacing + access + setbacks), which is why it is lower than array-only densities. The reciprocal is a derivation, not a source figure.
• ⚠ NPS-HPL date discrepancy to reconcile (not asserted as a contradiction). This source states the amended NPS-HPL “taking effect from 16 August 2024” (p.2). REG_009 records the specified-infrastructure / “construction” wording amendment as in force 14 September 2024. These are plausibly two distinct dates (the article’s general “amended NPS-HPL” effect vs REG_009’s specific clause) — flagged for reconcile, quoted verbatim here, no contested: flag set.
• Cross-refs: D01 (the feed), agro_pv (agriculture-within-solar / agri-PV bridge), REG_009 (NPS-HPL consent context). Other solar sources in the corpus (Bolinger array-only density; EPA Tauhei fast-track decision; solar-land-use compiled research) bracket the array-only vs total-site density range.

Connections

Links to

Sources (1): REG_009

Technologies (1): Agro-PV (Dual-Use Solar + Agriculture)

EDT domains (1): D01: Renewable Energy & Storage Systems

Referenced by

EDT domains (1): D01: Renewable Energy & Storage Systems

Sources (1): CR_059