Rog Wood
Farming correspondent
THERE has been a dramatic increase in the number of solar PV (photovoltaic)
developers looking for large PV farm sites – or solar array sites – in
Scotland.
Thomas McMillan, renewable energy specialist with land agent Smiths Gore,
reports: “We have seen more solar PV developer interest in the last three
months than at any time to this point.”
According to Mr McMillan, this could be down to a number of factors. Solar
PV offers low-risk returns that will suit some investors, uncertainty over
tariffs has been overcome and degression details have been confirmed, and
the cost of a solar PV panel has also come down significantly since the
Feed-In Tariff was introduced in April 2010.
“Large-scale solar also now has one of the lowest levelised cost of energy
of all renewable energy technologies and is increasingly close to ‘grid
parity’, where solar power will no longer need subsidy support,” said Mr
McMillan.”Parts of England are already saturated with solar PV sites with
no grid capacity remaining, and in some places anti-solar PV action groups
have been set up, so the search is on for sites elsewhere. All this has
resulted in developers looking to Scotland where there is less risk of
schemes being refused, and prompting an alternative development opportunity
for many landowners.”
Developers are looking for sites of 30 to 250 acres to accommodate arrays
of 5MW-50MW.
SNIP
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