Countryside Renewables will begin the 5 MW Solar Project

Countryside Renewables, a company specialized in the development, acquisition and financing of solar, wind and natural projects (CRL), which has a great experience in the field, they financed over 1 billion euro projects in solar and wind energy projects all over Europe, just managed to get the permission to build a 5 Megawatt solar project in Exning, Suffolk.

 There were a lot of possible alternative sites for the construction in the United Kingdom, over 500 locations were screened for the project, but in the end Countryside Renewables picked the Exning location, which is surrounded by trees on all sides so the neighbors who own properties in the area will not be affected by the forthcoming project.

 Over 22 000 of photo voltaic panels are to be installed in the beginning of 2013, when the project is expected to start, yet CRL was not able yet to provide us with the information about who the supplier will be. The 5 Megawatt installation will be finished by the end of June, 2013, if everything works as planned.

 When the project will be completed and fully functional, the energy generated by the 22 000 solar panels will be enough for powering over 1200 homes, with an estimated 5 GWh of solar power produced every year. This is much more than needed in Exning village so the residents will have the capacity to be completely off the grid, and entirely fed by solar power.

 Countryside Renewables claims that the project will provide reactive power control to the grid, making it one of the first solar projects in the United Kingdom which has that feature.

The managing director of Countryside Renewables, Mr. John Dunlop told us that the project is "Well located" and the electricity produced by the solar park will be significantly cheaper than the power provided by offshore wind parks.


For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime: 

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/

Lightsource and Eaton developing 11MW of solar parks in the UK

Lightsource Renewable Energy, the well known  United Kingdom based developer, owner and operator specializing in PV installations, just finished completing the development of three solar parks  located all around the United Kingdom. The biggest park developed until now is located in Cambridgeshire and has an installed capacity of 5MW, the other two solar parks are in Devon and produce 2.5 MW and 3.5 MW.

For these projects to take place, Lightsource Renewable Energy partnered with Solarcentury, also a UK based solar panel designer/manufacturer, which has a very good engineering and project management team, also they teamed up with Eaton’s Electrical Sector. This company, which is a major player on the market for power management systems came with the knowhow and the actual hardware in installing BoS (balance of system) for each of the three solar parks.

In order to get connected to the power grid, Eaton played a significant part by designing/supplying and installing eight substations, all of them custom made for the project.

The solar energy flows from the solar park into Eaton DC junction boxes and from there into some SolarMax TS-SV 330kW inverters(which help in achieving maximum power point (“MPP”) efficiencies of 99%).; these feed into  Eaton’s Memform low-voltage switchboards.  These substations contain some 280V to 11kV transformers and Eaton Xiria 11kV ring main units with integral G59 protection. This technology helps reducing maintenance requirements and also plays a significant part in cutting the environmental impact of the equipment during the time of manufacture and at the end-of-life disposal.

These custom made substations courtesy of Eaton provide a very important connection between the PV panels and the national power distribution grid. With this installation, the company has extended its strong presence is the solar energy sector.

Thanks to the significant progress in solar panel technology, the large scale solar developments in the United Kingdom became more common and cost effective, this was evident in the last 18 months.

For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime: 

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/

Good news for 7 cities in UK, 12 million for Green Deal

For 7 major cities in UK its Hanukkah already, they are about to receive f £12 million for their Green Deal project, we are talking here about Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.
DECC selected them because of their bold plan, called Green Deal, promises to cut down carbon emissions.
Mr. Edward Davey, energy secretary, said, and I quote:

“These cities have really ambitious plans to lower their emissions, reduce energy use and help people save money on their bills. I’ve been really impressed by their plans to start testing the Green Deal and transforming our homes and buildings.
“This funding will help them get up and running, and I look forward to seeing a number of properties across whole communities get the energy efficient improvements they need.”

For DECC, this deal is a test for the Green Deal framework, kind of a beta version before its official launch in October, the 7 cities are expected to undertake around 2500 retrofits and every each one of the cities who will receive the money must contribute to an equal amount from their local budgets.

 For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime:

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/