UK’s largest solar farm goes live

The UK’s largest solar farm at Hawton, near Newark in Nottinghamshire, has officially gone live this week.

The 4.9MW array has been built on the site of an old quarry and features 21,600 panels, providing enough electricity for up to 1,300 homes a year.

Planning permission was granted in May this year and construction took just five weeks as the project partners raced to get the site up and running before the reduced Feed-in Tariff levels come into effect on 1 August.

Solar developer Lightsource Renewable Energy, supported by Octopus Investments, financed and owns the Hawton site, while it was developed by Lark Energy and built by German solar company Conergy.