Solar developer Elgin Energy has secured £4.7 million of funding to complete the late-stage development of a 250MW-strong UK solar portfolio.
The fundraising round – Elgin’s fourth – was completed with Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland, making it the second time the developer has worked with the Irish arm of the US financial services firm. A further fundraising round has already been proposed for later this year after a previous funding round was oversubscribed.
Elgin’s new pipeline comes on the back of the 21 projects with a combined capacity of 230MW across the UK and Northern Ireland that it brought forwards under the now defunct Renewables Obligation scheme.
Elgin remained in the market once the scheme had shut, and has now amassed what it claims to be one of the largest qualified late-stage solar pipelines in the UK.
Within that pipeline sits a 50MW project on a former RAF airfield in Scotland, granted planning approval in May 2018, which stands to be among the country’s largest once complete.
The company is expecting solar to become cost-competitive in the UK wholesale power market from later this year, triggering the development of its project pipeline.
Ronan Kilduff, managing director at Elgin Energy, said the firm had seen further advances in the UK solar industry and a “marked increase in appetite” from investment funds over the last year.
“With one of the largest late stage pipelines in the UK, we are well placed to address this growing demand. Solar PV is the key scalable technology that can facilitate rapid decarbonisation of homes, businesses and industry through the 2020s. The future is bright, the future is solar,” Kilduff added.