Northern Ireland: 5 MW PV plant to power water treatment facility completed

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According to the NI Water, 24,000 solar panels will provide 4.99 MWp, enough to meet the demand of the Dunore Water Treatment Works (WTW) in South Antrim, one of Northern Ireland’s largest treatment plants of the country. Ranked by energy consumption, the treatment plant in question is the third largest of the country.

“As the largest user of electricity in Northern Ireland, we are committed to finding innovative renewable energy projects to reduce our expenditure on power, which has already tumbled by £5 million over the last three years. The Dunore solar farm is a major step toward reaching our goal of increasing electricity consumption from renewable sources from the current 13% to 40% by 2021“, says the company’s CEO, Sara Venning.

The 33-acre site located on the eastern shore of Lough Neagh cost £7 million to complete and is expected to save the water provider half a million pounds annually in energy costs.

The company also announced that apart from meeting the energy needs of the treatment plant the PV-system will produce enough energy to feed into the spare capacity of the local grid.

The executing contractor on the solar project, Graham, emphasized the positive cooperation, between the staff of NI Water and the company. “Like all of our NI Water projects, the Dunore solar farm – where we also worked alongside our suppliers RPS, Greencells and Scotts Electrical was only successful because of the openness of NI Water’s operational staff integrating with the Graham team,” commented Civil Engineering Managing Director at Graham, Leo Martin, in a statement.

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