The UK’s largest operational solar photovoltaic plant was successfully acquired by Foresight Solar Fund Limited this month, with acquisition technical due diligence support from leading renewable energy consultancy, SgurrEnergy. The 32.2MW Wymeswold project, near Loughborough in Leicestershire, was constructed in just six weeks and successfully commissioned in March this year, reaching the 2 ROC (Renewable Obligation Certificate) deadline.
The scope of work completed by SgurrEnergy, part of Wood Group, covered full technical due diligence services, including a site inspection, technology review, system design review, energy yield assessment, permitting and grid connection review along with EPC and O&M contract reviews. Support on provisional acceptance was also provided and there is potential to provide further support during intermediate and final acceptance testing.
SgurrEnergy’s project manager, Raphael Raggatt, said: “Wymeswold is a landmark solar project in the UK in terms of the scale and the speed of construction. This brought additional challenges compared to typical projects in the acquisition phase, however our strong track record and capability in technical due diligence was key to successful completion of the project. We look forward to working on future projects with Foresight Solar Fund Limited.”
“We anticipate that the UK will continue to be one of the largest solar markets in Europe in 2014 and SgurrEnergy will continue to be actively involved in many of these projects.”
The Wymeswold solar plant uses over 133,000 modules and was constructed by S.A.G. Solarstrom UK.
SgurrEnergy has worked on around 100 PV plants in the UK alone over the last 12 months. Globally, the team has worked on over 4GW of solar projects in countries including India, South Africa and China along with much of Western Europe.
SgurrEnergy is a leading engineering consultancy specialising in worldwide renewable energy projects.
Founded 11 years ago by technical director Ian Irvine and implementation director Steve McDonald, the company has been involved in more than 110GW of renewable energy projects in over 50 countries around the world.
Headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, SgurrEnergy has international offices in China (Beijing), Canada (Vancouver), India (Pune), France (Paris), Ireland (Dublin), the US (Portland), Brazil (São Paulo), Norway (Stavanger) and Germany (Hamburg). www.sgurrenergy.com
SgurrEnergy is a subsidiary business of Wood Group.