British Solar Renewables has announced that is has received £40 million in construction financing to deliver five PV projects totalling 42MW of capacity.

The solar parks are located in Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire and will all be completed before 31 March in order to benefit from the 1.6ROC regime.

The developer claims that all project sites are located on poor quality land, close to viable grid connections and will have an unobtrusive impact on local residents.  

The financing is being delivered by Venn Partners, while British Solar Renewables’ in-house EPC team will lead site planning, design and construction. Grid connection will be handled by the company’s new subsidiary Renewable Energy Connections.

Commenting on the arrangement, Jonathan Freeland, partner at Venn Partners, said: “This is our first commitment into the UK solar market and is in line with our strategy to provide our investment partners and borrowers with flexible alternative financing solutions to traditional bank channels in asset-based markets.

“We anticipate further investment opportunity to arise in UK solar as the financing market matures and the subsidy environment evolves further.”

Angus McDonald, managing director, British Solar Renewables, added: “The addition of further development funding enables British Solar Renewables to achieve the group’s goal of delivering more than 120MW in the six months to March 2014. The company has in place a funding platform, including our new funding partners to allow significant delivery of solar development over the course of 2014.”

In 2013 the UK was ranked in sixth place globally for large-scale solar PV, and is one of just six countries that had, or approached, a GW-level large-scale solar market during 2013. This year, the UK is expected to become the largest solar market in Europe for the first time during the first quarter of 2014.