An award-winning approach to farming

Dairy farmer Stuart Taylor turned to solar energy when looking to cut electricity costs in his milking parlour.

A £4,000 photovoltaic array was installed 18 months ago to heat the water needed to sterilise parlour equipment at Argoed Farm, New Brighton, Mold.

Mr Taylor has mixed feelings about the benefits: once the water boiled over because of inadequate water cylinder capacity; on other occasions it failed to heat up sufficiently.

"I’ve been a bit disappointed," said Mr Taylor, who first installed solar panels on the farmhouse in 2001 to provide domestic hot water.