A LEADING clean energy technology company has secured a contract to repower and upgrade a solar farm near Taunton.

Halse Solar Farm is a government subsidy accredited site that has developed significant performance and availability issues over its ten-plus years in operation.

Environmena is set to repower the solar panel farm ahead of rapidly approaching 'peak generation months' in the summer.

The company will also work on Horsacott Solar Farm in Barnstaple and Jordanston Solar Farm in Tenby.

Enviromena’s in-house Design and Optimisation team have reviewed the performance data from all the sites following full-site surveys in order to pinpoint what is needed to bring each solar farm back up to optimal working conditions.

The company hopes the upgrades will ensure the solar farms are future-proof and easy to maintain going forward, with the results of this work predicted to see all three sites return to 100% availability.

In specifics, uprated inverters will be installed across all three sites where required, full replacement of all DC cabling and upgrades to the electrical infrastructure will restore the sites back to full operating capacity.

In addition to improving the current and ongoing reliability and safety of the sites, these works will increase the amount of clean energy being exported back to the grid. 

Gary Saunders, Technical Director at Enviromena, who is leading the repowering project, said: “Over time solar projects like these see performance reductions, as much as 25% in some cases, due to failed DC cabling and ducting or older technology inverters becoming obsolete.

"Sites become much more difficult to maintain, so repowering is a cost-effective way of bringing them back to and maintaining their maximum possible performance.

"It also increases the value of the asset while at the same time increasing its life span. 

“A significant amount of effort goes into repowering projects, but we are well placed to support asset owners on projects such as this thanks to our in-house experienced resources covering planning, design, grid, construction and O&M.”