Investment manager Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has begun commercial operations at a 373MW solar PV plant in the UK.
Located in Kent, southeast of England, the Cleve Hill Solar Park is the largest operational solar PV plant in the country, and the first project over 100MW to be operational.
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The second biggest operational project in the UK is the Llanwern Solar Farm plant in Gwent, Wales, as shown in Solar Media’s Market Research report ‘Utility-Scale Solar: UK Completed Assets Database’, which features details on more than 1,000 sites and their current asset owners.
Construction of the solar plant began in 2023 and will be co-located with a 150MW battery energy storage system (BESS) for which the construction is underway, according to the company.
The solar-plus-storage plant was the first solar power project to be consented as a nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP), which are large-scale solar projects with an installed capacity of more than 50MW.
According to the company, the Cleve Hill project was the first solar NSIP to be awarded a Contract for Difference (CfD) in round 4 of the auction (AR4). In addition to securing a CfD, the project has also secured an offtake agreement with supermarket chain Tesco, which is the largest corporate power purchase agreement (cPPA), according to Quinbrook.
“Reaching commercial operations is a major technical, construction and financial achievement for our teams, our partners and our investors. Cleve Hill was not an easy project to build and we overcame many challenges along the way,” said Keith Gains, managing director and UK regional leader at Quinbrook.
This article was first published on our sister site Solar Power Portal.
