Renewable energy giant SunEdison is “exploring all options” in the UK following the expiry of the Renewable Obligation Certificate deadline earlier this month, the company’s general manager for Europe Alessandro Ceschiat has said.
Speaking to Solar Power Portal, Ceschiat said that the developer remained “fully committed” to the UK solar market despite the expiry of ROC support for projects above 5MW, adding that CfDs and the nascent commercial and community split project regulation are of interest to the firm.
SunEdison installed an additional 97MW of capacity to the grid in Q1 this year taking its utility-scale total in the UK to in excess of 375MW, and Ceschiat said it sent a message to the UK market.
“The message is we want to do more. We’ve already done so much, but we want to keep growing,” he said.
Ceschiat said the company had a “strong pipeline” of sub-5MW projects for the near future but that the UK government’s CfD process remains a “very interesting” proposition for the firm, confirming that SunEdison would look to compete in future rounds.
Split commercial and community projects are also of interest to SunEdison after Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Climate Change issued guidance on changes to the feed-in tariff that came into effect earlier this month, enabling two solar projects with capacities up to 5MW to share a grid connection point.
The changes have been thought to be of interest to developers with projects in the 5-10MW range that missed this month’s ROC deadline, and Ceschiat said it is the “right way to go” to involve local communities in solar projects.
“It's a very good thing both for the companies building the projects to optimise interconnection costs, and for communities that will be participating in a more direct way in the schemes. We're looking at a lot of options there and we're looking at it with a lot of interest,” he said.