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UK’s first subsidy-free solar farm opens

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The UK's first solar farm that has been developed without government subsidy has opened near Flitwick in Bedfordshire. The 10 MW Clayhill solar farm is twinned with a 6 MW battery storage system – which is integral to the project being built without a government support contract.

The Clayhill farm, which comprises 31,000 solar panels and was built in just 12 weeks, was opened on Tuesday by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s recently appointed Minister of State for Climate Change and Industry, Claire Perry.

Perry praised the innovative approach to the project, in which the developer, Anesco, worked closely with its supply chain to reduce costs at every stage of project design and construction, and to figure out how to make it financially viable.

Anesco, which financed and built the farm, will benefit from the project’s use of innovative solar inverters along with an already-existing nearby substation. The project will generate revenue through a power purchase agreement, as well as through providing grid balancing and capacity services.

The solar panels and the site’s five 1.2 MW / 1.2 MWh battery storage units were supplied by the Chinese photovoltaic, battery and electric car manufacturer BYD, with innovative 1,500 V string solar inverters being supplied by Huawei – also a Chinese company.

The solar panels are already generating power, with the battery system due to be fully up and running by November. When the batteries are charged the site can feed 16 MW of power into the grid. The batteries can reach full charge in an hour.

Launch event
The sun broke through the morning fog halfway through the project’s opening event, which was attended by BEIS officials and a cross-section of the industry.

Speaking on the morning, Steve Shine OBE, Anesco’s Executive Chairman said: ‘We sought the views of our supply chain and with them looked at every aspect of the project – its design, the technical specifications, the use of the very latest technology and the costs of the various components. By deciding to co-locate the 6 MW battery storage unit and by working closely with our supply chain partners, we have been able to achieve a subsidy-free development.’

The team looked at how they could get the most out of the system’s string inverters and how they could be as efficient as possible with the steel used on the site. Clayhill also shares the substation of another Anesco solar farm in an adjacent field – Hermitage – which is benefiting from the now closed Renewables Obligation subsidy scheme.

Clayhill will generate income in a more complex manner than Hermitage. The solar PV power is being sold to renewable energy aggregator Limejump under a power purchase agreement. And the batteries will interplay with the solar panels to enable the project to maximise revenue – by allowing power to be sold when it is lucrative to do so. Anesco plans to ‘stack’ revenue through providing a number of services to the grid – via National Grid’s frequency response flexibility mechanisms, as well as via Traid payments. And it also plans to bid into the government’s next Capacity Market round, the results of which will be revealed in January.

‘We looked at these two technologies and thought, we have to make them work together,’ said Shine. ‘Solar by itself is still very difficult. But when you bring it together with storage and get the benefit from both sides, and bring the economic case together, you start having a look at what is really going to be the future for the UK – a renewable site that can deliver energy when you need it.’

Anesco says that it is looking at replicating the Clayhill model at five other sites in the UK, which are at various stages of development.

‘We have a number of similar sites in our pipeline, we want to build more of this,’ said Shine. ‘We want to work with BEIS, Ofgem and National Grid to make this the future. We don’t need subsidy, but we do need a bit more certainty about where things are going.’

UK solar
The UK solar sector has seen subsidy rates cut and large farms have been excluded from the government’s Contract for Difference process for supporting other renewable technologies.

Perry told the audience that regardless of these cuts the government will reach its solar power target for 2020, and that it is right to revisit technology support in the face of changing circumstances.

Perry said she wanted to celebrate the level of ingenuity and creativity used in the project. ‘It’s putting it all together and making it work in a way that doesn’t rely endlessly on subsidy,’ she said. ‘Subsidy has been a great way to get markets moving… we’ve seen it also with offshore wind.’

Hinting that the government’s long-awaited Clean Growth Plan was imminent, Perry said: ‘I’m aware we need to work hard to make sure there’s more confidence with investors going forward, but this is a great example of when it comes together.’

‘The cost of solar panels and batteries has fallen dramatically over the past few years, and this first subsidy-free development at Clayhill is a significant moment for clean energy in the UK,’ she said.

Anesco operates over 100 solar sites totalling over 700 MW of capacity.

 

Photo: An overhead view of the Clayhill solar farm
Source: Anesco

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