UK’s Largest Solar PV Plant Completed in Just 10 Weeks

The UK is now able to take advantage of its biggest photovoltaic (PV) solar power facility, which has been constructed by Spanish company Isolux Corsan in a timeline of just 10 weeks, ahead of schedule and in-budget.

The facility comprises three, five-megawatt (MW) solar PV power plants in Cornwall, that required EUR40 million (USD54.1 million) to be built.

This brings to more than 300MW the total electricity generation capacity of the solar PV power plants the company has built worldwide in the past three years.

Located in Langform, Churchtown and Manor, the three solar PV projects became operational in mid-July, with a total of 22,000 crystalline solar PV modules set on fixed arrays now operational at the respective sites.

Although set for the end of summer, the company ensured it would qualify for full entitlement under the solar scheme by first linking the project site to transmission lines, a move that took place well before construction of the solar farm began.

Construction and grid connection to the Western Power Distribution grid was completed before August 1, thus allowing the projects to qualify for a higher feed-in tariff (FiT).

Utility-scale solar energy projects such as the one in Cornwall (UK) usually take many months or even years to complete - from the design phase to actually powering households - which makes Isolux Corsan’s 10-week build schedule quite a feat.

With 1,500MW under construction, Isolux Corsan ranks among the largest companies in the world when it comes to the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of solar PV power plants. Besides the aforementioned UK projects, it built the 72MW Rovigo PV power plant in Italy, the largest in Europe, in just eight months.

The company's development of photovoltaic projects starts with processing the licenses and paperwork, goes on to the engineering and the construction, and stretches to the commissioning and then the maintenance of the infrastructure throughout its operational life.