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The UK’s largest solar farm, the 46MWp Landmead solar farm in Oxfordshire, has been connected to the grid by developers Belectric UK and First Solar.
The successful grid connection of Landmead was a condition of the acquisition of the solar farm by Foresight Solar Fund in December.
Belectric UK said it took three months to install 483,000 photovoltaic modules on the 200 acre site.
The grade 3 agricultural land on which the solar modules are now installed is unsuitable for agricultural use. As 95 per cent of the land is materially unchanged it will be remain suitable for sheep grazing without energy production being affected.
Belectric UK said it will be optimising parts of Landmead to support biodiversity on the site.
It said Landmead is a “prime example of the multiple benefits” solar farm projects can deliver to the UK.
In October last year the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced farmers would no longer receive subsidies, effective from this month, for having solar farms on their land, saying it wanted to see English farmland “dedicated to growing quality food and crops”.
First Solar’s vice president for Europe, Christopher Burghardt said: “Thanks to the scale of its contribution towards helping the UK achieve its energy security goals, Landmead is the latest milestone in the country’s renewable energy roadmap. Enabled by advanced PV technology that is both efficient and cost competitive, it establishes a new benchmark for the development of solar energy in Britain.”
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