Lessons from Europe: current appetite for solar is being driven bycorporate interests
The success of 500MW+ solar parks in Europecould provide significant lessons for the UK, a panel of experts has said.
On the first day of January’s Global Solar Council, discussed the case of the 500MW+ Witnitz Energy solar PV power plantin Germany and how it demonstrates the investment case for developments of this scale.
The Witznitz Energy project, located justsouth of Leipzig, Germany, is claimed to be the largest solar project inEurope, “although we don’t expect it to be for long”, Sonia noted. The scale ofthe project was unprecedented – Oliver Marqurodt, senior manager of Hansa RealEstate Investments, which financially supported the development.
Dunlop noted that the project is a “great example” of a smaller developer – MOVEON Energy – delivering a project on amassive scale. The selection of the site partially aided in the success of theprocess – with a 380KV grid connection nearby, connection issues were minimal,and the location of the site on a former coal mine and next to a formercoal-fired power plant is “symbolic” to the transition away from fossil fuels,Dunlop added. It could be argued that with the UK’s final coal-fired powerplant shutting down in the autumn of 2024, former coal sites could be a usefuland untapped source of land for large-scale solar developments.
The question of financing these large-scaleprojects is one that is particularly prescient to the UK at this time, notedMariya Merdzhanova, head of sales for Eastern and Northern Europe atJinkoSolar EU, who supplied the 1.1 million solar modules for the site. Withthe UK government recently approving development consent orders (DCOs) for around 1GW of solar across two developments, the 480MWHeckington Fen Solar and 500MW West Burton Solar solar PV power plants,Merdzhanova said the question of finance is next, adding: “I think this is thekey for the UK at the moment”.
The answer could lie in power purchaseagreements (PPAs), if UK developers want to take a clue from the WitznitzEnergy project. The panellists noted that while the process of negotiating aPPA for Witznitz began relatively late in the process and took around a yearand a half to negotiate, the final successful deal with Microsoft is a keyexample of how much of the current appetite for solar is being driven bycorporate interests and their desire to decarbonise.
Overall, some of the biggest lessons to betaken from the success of the development are ones that are global anduniversal – most notably the need for transparency. Marqurodt notes that HansaReal Estate was impressed by MOVEOn Energy’s dedication from the start of theprocess, stating that the developer “put a lot of effort into how to make thesite aesthetically pleasing” through biodiversity measures such as hedgerowplanting. Overall, transparency and communication might be the most importantthings behind any developer’s success; as Marqurodt notes: “If you workhonestly, you can achieve a lot, and that has driven us through a lot of theups and downs”.