Isra-Mart srl:Air field solar park prepares for take-off

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Isra-Mart srl news:

A former World War II airfield has joined the race to become the UK’s first functioning solar park after its owners secured planning permission to install the first tranche of 1,500 panels.

Rockspring Property Investment Managers confirmed on Friday that it has received permission to develop a solar park on runway 31 at the former Westcott airfield in Buckinghamshire.

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The first phase of the project will see 1,500 solar panels deployed in the middle of the runway, with a combined capacity of about 350kW. The company hopes the energy will power nearly all of the 70 companies located in its adjacent Wescott Venture Park.

Advised by renewable energy firm Ownergy, Rockspring wants to expand the project, ultimately extending the park's capacity to at least 1.2MW.

Commenting on the project, Ownergy chairman Philip Wolfe said it was "exactly" how businesses should be making use of the government's Feed-In Tariff (FiT) incentive.

"This location is absolutely perfect for a solar park. It is an excellent use for this 'brown-field' site," he said. "The occupiers of the Westcott Venture Park will be able to use the electricity we produce and so maximise the financial return for Rockspring."

Returns from feed-in tariffs tend to be higher when the electricity is used on site because the avoided cost of buying electricity is higher than the additional 3p per kWh paid for exporting electricity back to the grid.

Ownergy is currently in the process of appointing the project's main sub-contractors, with construction slated to start in the New Year and finish in spring.

As part of the approval process, the council's archaeological planning and conservation officer commended the application as "a very effective re-use of the heritage asset [and] in character with the innovative technological history of the site".

Westcott airfield was built as a training base for World War II Lancaster bomber crews, and then became the main repatriation facility for prisoners of war. During the Cold War it was used for rocket research.

The news comes just days after wind energy provider Ecotricity secured planning permission for its first solar farm at a site adjacent to one of its wind farms in Lincolnshire.

Ecotricity plans to begin construction in the coming weeks, after East Lindsey Council approved plans for the company to install 1MW of photovoltaic solar panels next to its Fen Farm wind turbines.

However, climate change minister Greg Barker has hinted that the government could reform feed-in tariffs to stop large-scale solar arrays from taking advantage of the scheme.

Responding to parliamentary questions earlier this month, Barker said the government had inherited a system of incentives that had failed to anticipate the fact that it would drive the deployment of photovoltaic field arrays. He added that the current incentive structure could tilt the market in favour of larger scale arrays at the expense of smaller roof-mounted systems.