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Depleting energy resources, enhancing energy security and energy access and approaching climate change related challenges are some of the present day challenges. Against this backdrop, renewable energy (RE)-based farming has been a topic of serious discussion within Great Britain and Scotland. There are multiple advantages in the development and applications of RE micro-grids for farming communities as often they are located in areas that are quite remote and hence their energy sustainability provides security of supply. In the present article, a large-scale RE system that included solar photovoltaic and wind turbine has been critically analyzed with respect to its fractional contribution toward the total energy budget of a potato farm that produces 8000 tons of crops annually, with 4500 tons of the produce in cold storage for up to 8 months. The findings and recommendations from these case studies will help renewable energy practitioners in erecting and analyzing similar installations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The island of Sark, located in the English Channel, has endured an electricity distribution crisis for the past few years, resulting in high electricity costs almost six times higher than UK mainland energy prices. This article is focused on a methodology for finding the best renewable energy system with the lowest levelized cost of energy (LCOE) in comparison to the current energy rate of 66 p/kWh. Three different main cases of study have been compared in performance for different levels of renewable energy integration and energy storage, evaluating the estimated size of the system, installation cost and CO2 emissions. The results, which depend on the assumptions outlined, show that Case 2 renewable energy generation system is the most suitable in terms of reduction of CO2 emissions and expected earnings from a lower LCOE. Uncertainty in the results could be minimized if actual data from the island is made available by following the same methodology to find the best solution to the island's current energy generation problem. Due to non-available data for the load profiles and wind velocity a set of assumption were required to be implemented. As such, two different load profiles were selected—one with a peak of energy consumption in winter and the other with a summer peak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]