Andy Colthorpe

Foresight Group has purchased a large-scale UK solar farm from the Chinese tier-one PV module manufacturer Renesola, with Foresight claiming that its UK solar portfolio now exceeds 400MW of generation assets.

Solar Frontier, the vertically integrated thin-film PV manufacturer and project developer headquartered in Japan, has opened an office in London aimed at steering its activities in the currently-buoyant UK market.

Clean energy entrepreneur and activist Jeremy Leggett has said “out of date thinking” is behind a push to make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels within 10 years that was launched today by prominent UK academics.

Belectric UK will launch a large-scale project to test the grid-stabilising capabilities of battery-based energy storage systems at a solar farm in England.

Yorkshire-based wholesaler Zenex Solar has been bought out by renewable energy product distributor Segen, with the company’s new owner hoping to increase its customer-facing presence in the northern UK.

The head of a company selected by the UK government to deploy residential energy storage under a pilot scheme believes that his network of installers could deploy 10,000 units, equivalent to 30MWh of storage per month.

Solar investment ‘yield co’ NextEnergy Solar Fund has struck a deal to acquire 28MWp of additional PV generation capacity in the UK for £32.7 million, meaning the company now holds over 100MWp of such assets.

UK-based PV project developer Castillium has connected the 48kW project at South West College, in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. It will supply power to the CREST (Centre for Renewable Energy & Sustainable Technology) Passive Pavilion and, following a deal announced in January this year, has been equipped with robotic tracking made by US start-up QBotix.

Andy Colthorpe with a video comment on how the Lib Dems are seeking to appeal to the ‘green vote’, talking up the benefits of investing in renewable energy and making encouraging noises about solar, while the coalition government they are part of seems less sold on the idea.

DECC secretary of state for energy and climate change Ed Davey has said that he is “absolutely convinced” the falling costs of solar will make it the cheapest form of energy available in the coming years.