Armstrong signs JV to pursue 500MW UK solar and storage pipeline

UK renewables asset manager Armstrong Capital Management has penned a new joint venture with Danish investor European Energy to pursue a 500MW solar and storage pipeline in the UK.

The deal will see Armstrong, which aided the development of a large amount of utility-scale solar under the UK’s Renewables Obligation scheme, become the latest investor to commit to bringing forward sizeable quantities of subsidy-free solar and storage as project economics swing in their favour.

European Energy project director Thorvald Spanggaard said that the UK was a renewables market it had been keen to re-enter “for some time now”. Having worked on its own portfolio of wind and solar sites, Spanggaard said the firm had also been on the look out for local partners to “accelerate” its development activities.

“In Armstrong we have found an established player with a strong pipeline of projects. We look forward to delivering hundreds of MWs of subsidy-free renewable energy projects in the UK with Armstrong in the coming years,” he said.

Armstrong has arranged funding for more than 350MWp of solar projects throughout the UK and India, comprising utility-scale and rooftop systems.

Steve Mahon, chief executive at Armstrong, said in European Energy it had found a partner with an “excellent track record” of delivering high quality renewables projects, and one that “shares our belief in the long-term opportunities for solar and storage projects in the UK”.

Momentum behind subsidy-free solar developments has been building for some time but has accelerated especially in recent months. NextEnergy Solar Fund has now completed two such projects – a 5.4MW project completed in August and a further 50MW project energised in December 2019  – with the aim of connecting 150MW by the end of 2020.

Bluefield Solar Income Fund was another investor to have hailed the advent of subsidy-free solar in the UK towards the end of 2019 while Lightsource BP, among the most prolific of solar developers in the UK, told Solar Power Portal that it was chasing a 1GW pipeline in the country having declared that the market was “coming back”.

Subsidy-free project economics will be discussed at length at next month’s Solar Finance and Investment Europe conference, organised by Solar Power Portal publisher, Solar Media. Details of the event, including how to attend, can be found here.