Lots of people are getting very upset about the number of solar farms that are being built, planned or getting permission locally, mainly because these are on green fields, rather than ugly buildings.

The thing that puzzles me about solar ‘farms’, and solar power in general, is this: if it works so well, supplies so much electricity, does not affect anyone in any adverse way and is so easy to install and maintain, why has the Government itself not invested in a bigger way?

Why are some of the vast areas of Salisbury Plain the MoD owns not covered with panels? Or wind turbines, come to that. Much of it is out of sight of public roads so surely no one could object. Sheep could still graze under them, the rare wildflowers and grasses the Plain is also home to would also surely still prosper and the panels might even provide some useful cover for soldiers on exercises.

Why are those great big motorway gantries over the M4 near the M5 junction not powered by solar panels? If they are so easy to work round, why aren’t the sloping embankments of the nation’s thousands of miles of motorway covered with them? Maybe the rain running off them would only add to the flooding problems drivers encounter.

True, you do see solar-powered roadside warning signs in some places, mainly the countryside, and they seem very efficient, especially as they only work when they sense a car coming.

When will the Government stop paying irritating firms to ring me up telling me I ‘could qualify for a solar energy grant’ and get on with covering their own vast roofs with panels – surely the bigger the roof the bigger the saving on one’s electricity bill.

Or maybe one does not make as much back from those rooftop panels as we are led to believe?

My own only experience of solar is the string of lights I bought for the garden this summer – and if they are any indication of the quality of solar power one can expect to generate in Wiltshire, I would tell all these people jumping on the solar farm bandwagon not to hold their breath.

Despite the extravagant claims that they would ‘shine brightly for up to eight hours’ (and after all, in the summer we only have about eight hours of darkness) they certainly were not on when we got up in the middle of the night to head for the airport on holiday. Which doesn’t bode too well for the darker months – I will report back in the winter, when I was hoping to dig them out and use them for festive outdoor lighting.