Bluefield Solar Income Fund Limited (Bluefield Solar) have acquired five ground-mounted solar PV in England and Wales for a total investment of £22.7 million ($28.6 million), the investment firm reported today.
The five projects are each smaller than 5 MWp and are all expected to be brought online before March 31, 2017, which would make them eligible for a 1.2 Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC) under the previous government-run solar subsidy program.
Two of the five solar farms – located in the English counties of Staffordshire and Northamptonshire – are being built by U.K. solar developer Solarcentury, and once the acquisition is complete it will boost Bluefield Solar’s total amount of PV acquired from Solarcentury to approximately 166 MW across 17 projects.
The additional three solar farms are located in Essex, Leicestershire and South Wales, and are being constructed by Parable UK Limited, who previously contracted two earlier solar farms for Bluefield Solar, located in Ashlawn and North Beer.
"Following the placing announced in October, which exceeded our target raise of £50 million, we are capitalizing on the forthcoming closure of the ROC scheme set for March 2017 by executing the company’s primary investment strategy of investing in construction projects," said Bluefield Solar chairman John Rennocks. "The company is committed to maintaining its strong pricing and return disciplines by preferring growth in primary markets rather than in the secondary markets, where returns are lower as increasing competition squeezes prices in a finite pool of assets."
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.