Birmingham contractor fits out huge solar farm in double-quick time
The design, installation and commissioning of the electricity plant for this £12 million 5 MW solar farm near Swindon was completed in just six weeks by Birmingham electrical-services contractor JT Hawkes — enabling it to go live before Government changes to the Feed-in Tariff took effect on 1 August. Westmill Solar Farm is on a site that also has five wind turbines.
The clients were Blue Energy and Low Carbon Solar. The installation comprises nearly 23 000 solar PV panels from Abakus of Germany.
JT Hawkes designed and installed the entire power-distribution network, including building trenches for 184 km of solar cable and 32 kV power cabling. The brief also involved fitting inverters to convert DC electricity to AC for feeding into the National Grid via two electricity sub-stations.
