“It has been an experience of a lifetime to have everybody look at you as you take something on first,” says Rosalind Smith Maxwell, director of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, of working on the Cleve Hill solar plant.
The UK’s first solar nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP), the 373MW Cleve Hill solar site has been the first of its kind to reach every milestone along its realisation.
Speaking in a webinar hosted by Solar Power Portal, Maxwell explained that, having commenced work on a project double the size of Cleve Hill in the US just 18 months before taking on the NSIP, “we knew we had the expertise to take on something of this scale”.
“But when you’re delivering 373MW or 560,000 panels, it takes a village—you’re raising that child.”
Maxwell says everyone involved in the project has had to be brave and patient throughout the process. It has taken five years since being granted a development consent order (DCO) in May 2020 to reach near completion of the solar power plant’s construction.
Cleve Hill is the only NSIP under construction. Maxwell says that, by her maths, we will need roughly 85 Cleve Hills, and with less than five years until 2030, “there’s an awful lot of knowledge sharing to be done and a lot of construction to get underway with”.
Of the government’s Clean Power 2030 goal, which includes an ambition of having 47GW of solar generation installed, Maxwell says: “We have to think of them as ambitious targets that will not be achieved.
“By having a very strong and ambitious target I hope to see significant investment in the supply chain because I do not currently believe we have enough skilled labour to deliver the projects.”
Maxwell says we are in a “strange moment of flux”, with the government’s strong ambition not changing the fact that “we have real world challenges on delivering on that ambition”.
“Without sharing the knowledge I think we are going to find it very hard to avoid repeating a series of missteps that will lead to a suboptimal delivery of the target.”
Solar Media Market Research’s lead solar analyst Josh Cornes presented the state of the UK market for large-scale, transmission connected solar.
Most of the capacity at that level is “skeptical at best,” he says, identifying about 33GW of projects moving forward to become more realistic prospects, either at planning, with a DCO page or a website identifying their land rights.
Over 25 projects have been submitted into the English Planning Inspectorate for large-scale solar projects totaling over 11GWp, with the Scottish Energy Consents Unit at seven projects over 80MWp, totalling 800MWp, and in Wales there are currently two developments of National Significance, totaling 360MW.
Cornes says: “Although things are tight for the next four and a half years, post 2030 there’s huge potential for large-scale solar; with the announcement that distribution and transmission connected projects will fall into the same pot [for grid connections], transmission scale developers have definitely been heard.”
Watch the full webinar to see Maxwell’s comments on financing Cleve Hill and a Q&A.
Both Rosalind Smith Maxwell and Josh Cornes will speak at the UK Solar Summit on 1-2 July. View the agenda and book tickets here—use our exclusive discount code SPP20 for 20% off your ticket!
