Martifer Solar, a subsidiary of Martifer SGPS, is developing 50 MW of photovoltaic plants in the United Kingdom. The company intends to ensure the sale of the ready-to-build projects during the licensing process, which is expected to be completed at the end of 2013.
Located in the southern regions of Wiltshire, Swindon, Kent, Devon and Hampshire, these solar farms will have an average size of 10MW, confirming the British Photovoltaic Association's recent statement has recently said, that solar developers in the U.K. are installing bigger power plants as panel costs drop. According to this organization, presently more than half of projects in development are sized 5 MW or bigger.
"Following the development of a large-scale PV cluster in this year's first quarter, these projects reinforce Martifer Solar's ambition to develop PV projects in the U.K. It is becoming a truly high potential country for this industry, unlike much of Europe, where the solar market is already mature," says Jo?o Cunha, Country Manager of Martifer Solar in the United Kingdom.
U.K. Energy Minister, Greg Barker, affirmed recently that solar power developers should pay attention to the "huge potential" for the industry in Britain. The country aims to install as much as 22 GW of solar capacity by 2020, as part of its target to obtain 15 percent of its energy from renewables by the same year.
Martifer Solar has been present in the U.K. since 2011 and has recently developed and installed a 28.1 MWp PV cluster in this country. Located in the south-west region, the entire project of five plants, with capacities between 4.4 and 6.63 MWp, has been sold to Lightsource Renewable Energy. Currently, Martifer Solar is running the operations and maintenance (O&M) services of these plants with local staff, establishing itself also as an O&M provider for 3rd party plants in the UK market.
