At Alight, we develop, own and operate our solar parks and sell the clean electricity to energy-intensive companies. By leasing your land to us, you can ensure even your low-productivity plots yield a profit while also contributing to a more sustainable society.
Give your land new life
Why lease your land?
A stable income stream
It’s likely that parts of your land yield low returns today. By leasing out this land for a solar park, you can secure a stable income stream and increase the financial viability of your business.
A more sustainable society
The world is facing an increased urgency to tackle the climate crisis by transitioning to renewable energy. Solar parks contribute directly to this, bringing more green electricity to our communities.
A long-term future
Alight sells the clean electricity generated by the solar park to large, energy-intensive companies through power purchase agreements, which usually last 10-25 years. This secures your long-term finances, and at the end of the contract, the solar installation can be removed and your land can be fully restored.
Is your land suitable for solar?
Size and location
Land should be at least 10 hectares in size, with strong solar irradiation and outside protected areas. This can deliver roughly 10 MW of electricity, equivalent to the household electricity of 2,000 Swedish homes.
A suitable surface
Flat, dry and even land is the easiest to build on. As such, agricultural land, pasture land, industrial land or forest land is most suitable for a solar park.
Proximity to the grid
To bring the project online in a profitable way, it’s critical the land be positioned near a grid connection point with ample capacity.
Choosing a trusted partner
Founded in Sweden in 2013, Alight has over a decade of experience developing solar projects in the Nordics. Today, Alight owns and manages over dozens of solar installations totalling hundreds of megawatts, with customers including Toyota Material Handling, Swedbank, Martin & Servera and H&M.
Our business model is based on long-term ownership of assets, meaning our team of in-house legal, biodiversity, permitting and PPA experts will develop your project with the future in mind.
Biodiversity and conservation
Our vision extends beyond solar power. As we are long-term partners, we see ourselves as custodians of biodiversity, carefully integrating ecological measures into every project. Our solar parks not only reduce carbon emissions but also strive to preserve and promote biodiversity in local ecosystems. In many of our parks, we bring in sheep to graze and sow flowering plants to benefit pollinating insects.
Frequently asked questions
There is great potential for solar power in the Nordics. According to the World Bank’s solar atlas, the electricity yield from solar cells is as large in southern Sweden as in Denmark, the Netherlands and northern Germany (around 1,000–1,100 kWh/kWp) and only marginally less than in southern Germany. Even along the coasts of northern Sweden, where population density and electricity demand are highest, the yield is on par with the southern parts of the country, partly because the cooler temperature increases the efficiency of the solar cells.
According to SCB, solar power in Sweden contributed roughly 3 TWh of electricity in 2023. This corresponds to the annual use of household electricity in 600,000 villas, or 2.5 percent of total Swedish electricity use.
Solar parks are temporary installations that don’t require permanent intervention on the ground, unlike the construction of, for example, properties or infrastructure. A common design is for double-sided solar panels to be placed in rows with about 4-10 meter intervals. The panels are attached to steel profiles, approximately 0.5–1 meter above the ground, and the profiles are installed in the ground. The only “buildings” that are erected are smaller substations to lead the electricity produced to the grid.
All types of power in the electricity system have times of the year when production decreases for various reasons. Solar power complements wind power, which has lower production during the times of the year when solar power produces the most. Solar and wind power can therefore be considered excellent complements to each other for a more stable electricity system. When solar power produces the most during the summer, nuclear power also goes down in production for a number of weeks for maintenance, and also cogeneration, whose business model is based on a need for heat, reduces production. With more solar power in the electricity system during the summer, the hydropower can also further save water in its reservoirs to balance the wind power during the winter.
There is every opportunity to meet Sweden’s needs for both a strengthened food supply and increased electricity production. What is a suitable location for solar parks is determined by a number of factors, not least the ability to connect to electricity grids that have sufficient capacity. Other central factors are: what land is available, the land’s buildability, other existing interests and the area’s planning requirements. Therefore, the choice of location in each individual case needs to be based on a balanced assessment. Pitting agriculture against solar parks is also unnecessary as they can be combined. To keep vegetation from shading the solar panels, some form of maintenance must be done within the parks. This could, for example, involve growing hedgerows or cereals between the panels and then working the land with a tractor or having grazing sheep in the park.
Sweden’s total agricultural land amounts to 3 million hectares, of which just under 115,000 hectares are fallow. The total area for approved solar parks on agricultural land of a maximum of 2,997 hectares therefore constitutes 0.1 percent of agricultural land or 2.6 percent of land that is currently lying fallow.
In total, the parks that have been approved or are awaiting approval cover an area of 19,820 hectares, of which no more than 55 percent (11,027 hectares) is agricultural land. This corresponds to 0.4 percent of agricultural land or 10 percent of land that is currently lying fallow.
A sharp increase in fossil-free electricity production is necessary for us to tackle climate change and support the ongoing electrification of society. Installing solar cells on roofs is an important measure to get there, but if we are to greatly increase our fossil-free electricity production, solar parks on land are equally as important. Large solar parks create rapid and extensive climate benefits by contributing to the electrification of society.
There are good conditions for solar parks to contribute positively to biological diversity. For example, undisturbed heath and meadow plants under the solar cells can increase species richness and carbon storage in the soil and give a better soil back.
To better understand our impacts, we recently conducted a pilot study with Ecogain using the Climb tool to calculate biodiversity net gain when building solar parks on agricultural land. The results show that by preserving higher values areas, ensuring correct maintenance and simultaneously converting the cultivated field to an open grassland with low intensity mowing, we can increase the biodiversity of the site by roughly 100% over a time span of 40 years.
These results are in line with other studies and provide important guidance on which environmental stewardship actions are most impactful when creating nature-positive solar parks on agricultural land.