UK’s first solar-powered waste treatment plant

The UK’s first solar farm to power a waste treatment plant has been built in Cambridgeshire. Solarcentury, which built the facility along with Lightsource Renewable Energy, said the 5MW solar […]

The UK’s first solar farm to power a waste treatment plant has been built in Cambridgeshire.

Solarcentury, which built the facility along with Lightsource Renewable Energy, said the 5MW solar park is expected to supply more than 70% of electricity to the AmeyCespa’s Mechanical Biological Treatment plant in Waterbeach.

The farm, which has 20,000 solar panels, is expected to generate around 4,552MWh of energy every year, enough to power more than 1,200 homes.

Frans van den Heuvel, CEO of Solarcentury said: “Rather than the plant being connected to export into the grid, there has been significant engineering work to provide 3km of cabling from the plant running directly to local waste management company AmeyCespa.

“Unlike most utility scale ground mounted solar plants in the country, this solar plant prioritises the use of electricity by AmeyCespa’s facilities first, with minimal excess energy being fed back into the National Grid.”

Lightsource will supply the energy to the waste management company through a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for 25 years.

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