Social housing contractor, Forrest has teamed up with international investment firm, Macquarie, to supply and install solar on commercial buildings.

As part of Macquarie’s £50 million lending programme for solar PV, the partnership is offering commercial buildings free installations and greater energy independence for 20 years. The programme is for public and private, sloped or flat roofs – and also for ground mount installations.

The finance mechanism works by the commercial roof owner paying back rental payments for the installation to Macquarie, through income received from power purchase agreements (PPAs) and the government’s feed-in-tariff (FiT). 

All installations have insurance and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) guarantee.

Ted Macdougal, development director for Forrest, said: “Businesses are expected to play an active role in minimising their environmental impact. The installation of free solar power generation technology will help them achieve this while also reducing energy bills.”

Macdougal also said Forrest has a long term investment pipeline, hoping for thousands of PV installations for UK buildings to generate clean energy.

The commercial building programme follows the successful residential programme between Macquarie and Forrest, announced in December 2013.

The £120 million residential solar PV partnership scheme agreed Macquarie would fund solar installations carried out by Forrest over three years, providing residents unlimited use of the electricity generated by the arrays for free.