Plans for the construction of a utility-scale solar farm that operates without the support of subsidies have been announced by UK project developer Hive Energy.
Hive says that it has been granted consent to build a 40 MW photovoltaic (PV) farm on 72 ha of land in Hampshire, southern England. The solar farm will be located close to Hive’s headquarter office and will enable the firm to pilot and test the latest solar and energy storage technologies.
The solar farm will be built in 2018 but will not receive subsidies because of the closure of the UK’s Renewables Obligation (RO) scheme. Hive has not revealed how the farm will be financed. Other subsidy-free solar farms developed in the UK have relied on power purchase agreements (PPAs) with commercial offtakers to make their schemes viable.
