Case Studies

Corrie Energy’s dedicated R&D site, The Old Farm Shop near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, includes both fixed and tracking solar installations. Since 2021, it has served as a laboratory for testing, validating and refining Corrie’s tracker technology.

The fixed solar panel provides a consistent baseline, allowing each tracker to be measured against the same performance standard. We then have two of Corrie’s original trackers, which provide an ongoing reference point for design evolution and long-term reliability.

The third tracker at the site is continuously updated, most recently in November 2025. This unit acts as a live test platform, continuously updated as part of our R&D work. One of the earliest redesigns was developed and tested in partnership with Frazer-Nash. Together, the teams combined hands-on testing, advanced digital modelling and design for manufacturing principles to better adapt the trackers to real-world conditions. 

The newly installed design delivers the same trusted performance as earlier models, but with a lighter, more streamlined frame. Frazer-Nash continues to work closely with Corrie Energy, bringing their latest data-logging technology to the project. The team has fitted new strain gauges and installed a compact weather station to monitor wind speed and site conditions, linking environmental data to structural behaviour in real time. 

Beyond its engineering purpose, The Old Farm Shop demonstrates the potential of agrivoltaics – the dual use of land for both solar PV and agriculture. Goats graze freely beneath and around the trackers. Known for their particularly enthusiastic grazing habits, goats are a challenging choice for vegetation management, effectively controlling growth that might otherwise obstruct panels or maintenance areas – luckily the only part of the tracker they eat is the cable ties! 

The Old Farm Shop reflects Corrie Energy’s approach to partnership-driven innovation. We are hosted by a great local company who wants to reduce their electricity costs in a sustainable way. And for the trackers, we have long term relationships with leading technical partners to improve our product resilience and lower its lifetime cost. 

In late 2024, Our Cow Molly became the first UK farm to deploy Corrie Energy’s Latitude40 solar trackers, with six installed by the public car park. Each tracker carries four 450W panels, following the sun to maximise output across the day. Unlike fixed systems, these trackers generate additional power earlier in the morning and later in the evening, perfectly matching farm demand for milking and processing. 

On 29 April 2025, the bifacial units delivered 47% more kWh per panel than the adjacent rooftop solar array. The trackers are highly visible to customers visiting the farm shop and café, where they have already become a conversation starter and a symbol of local energy leadership. Eddie and the team are proud to showcase their commitment to innovation; they recently hosted an Open Farm Day focused on renewables, where the trackers took centre stage.

Corrie’s solar trackers not only generate more on a sunny day, but also have winter benefits. Eddie was thrilled when he noticed that the trackers, unlike the rooftop panels, had shed the snow accumulated over night. Eddie says that over the winter he could “typically lose 2-3 weeks of solar energy from [rooftop] panels that are covered in snow”. However, Latitude40 “consistently produce[s] energy through the heaviest snow falls, which has been fantastic for us as a farm.”

Beyond improving generation, Latitude40 has created a model agrivoltaic site, transforming previously single-use land into a productive dual-use landscape. The 10.6kW tracker array, installed in winter 2024, had already generated 93kWh of clean electricity by April 2025. The installation area is shared with a flock of sheep which graze freely beneath the panels, demonstrating a successful example of solar grazing, where livestock and renewables coexist on the same land. Over the same period, the farm’s 14kW rooftop array generated 84kWh, demonstrating that the Latitude40 trackers deliver higher yields within a smaller footprint.

At Our Cow Molly, Latitude40 has had “really positive benefits for multiple reasons”—it integrates renewable energy generation with active agriculture to boost productivity and biodiversity. The installation demonstrates how agrivoltaics can enhance farm resilience, offering a scalable model for clean, locally powered farming in the UK.