23 New Ground-Mount Solar Sites Connected by Lightsource bp in One Month

23 ground-mount solar sites has been connected by Lightsource bp in just one month

Lightsource Renewable Energy, Europe’s leading solar energy company, has connected 23 new sites in December totalling more than 100MW of new capacity.

This includes 14 sites connected under the Feed-In tariff (FIT) and 9 sites under the Renewable Obligations Certificate (ROC) schemes. As well as a bumper month of connections, Lightsource has a busy New Year ahead with plans to connect a further 14 ground-mount sites totalling 92MW by March 31st – to take its total installed capacity in the UK to 1.3GW.

Nick Boyle, CEO of Lightsource, said: “Despite the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the industry in recent months, we’ve seen a great many successes in 2015 and this latest round of connections is a great way for us to end the year. We are certainly no stranger to tough deadlines and difficult weather conditions, but it’s a huge testament to the capabilities of our in-house teams that we are able to complete such a mammoth task in a very short period of time.”

However, due to cuts to government subsidy, it is now only through its private-wire Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) offering that Lightsource is able to finance and develop utility-scale solar and energy storage solutions using land near to site – connecting them directly into the supply of major energy users such as factories, warehouses, data centres, transport hubs, leisure centres, chemical plants and water treatment facilities.

Nick added: “Whilst we are still taking stock of the recent government announcements concerning solar subsidies, we have big plans for 2016 and expect it to be another busy year. The UK solar industry has made great strides towards a subsidy-free environment. During the FiT and ROC regimes, we have worked hard to drive down costs and built a solid base of knowledge and expertise, which has prepared us for developing our first large-scale sites free of government support. However, it’s a great shame that the cuts to FIT will mean that domestic and commercial & industrial rooftop solar will not be able to enjoy the same success.”