Recently, Westmill Solar Co-operative just finished its business with Westmill Solar Park, in the end the acquisition took place and now the £16.5 million project is the biggest in the United Kingdom, and, supposedly, the largest co-operatively owned solar panel farm in the entire world.
The Westmill Solar Park is located outside Shrivenham on the Oxfordshire/Wiltshire border, it is a 5 MW solar PV farm built on a former airfield, the total surface is 30 acres on which are installed over 20 thousand solar panels, hence the nice figure of 4,900 MWh of electricity generated last year alone.
In June 2012, there was a £4 million share offer involving the acquisition of Westmill Solar Park, this was very attracting for the business community and it managed to attract about 1650 investors.
The project proved to be very popular, within 6 weeks its shares were snapped up and the actual offer was oversubscribed by over 50 percent, there was also a private share placement to be launched, the idea behind this being to enable the local community to be more involved in the project.
Also Investec Bank was part of the project, involving financing of course, along with the £6 million raised by the share offer, they also participated with substantial loan (a few million quid give or take) which is expected to be transferred in the near future to a pension fund bond, for safe keeping.
After the happy ending and the big success of this project, the founder and also the director of Westmill Solar Co-operative, Mr. Adam Twine made the following statement :
“Its’ been a real team effort to have pulled this off in the face of shifting government policy and tight timescales. Westmill represents the best of what low carbon investment and renewable energy can offer and hopefully will inspire others to realise that when we get together we can make change happen and can engage positively with the threat of climate change.”
Also, the chairman of Westmill Solar Co-operative , Mr. Phillip Wolfe said :
“Solar power will become the world’s greatest energy source in our lifetime; heralding a new era of sustainable and ‘democratic’ energy supply. As the success of Westmill shows, solar energy enables ordinary people to produce clean power, not only on their roof tops, but also at utility scale. I am pretty sure that this is the largest community owned solar power station in the world.”
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