TEC Register Update - Biggleswade 500MW Solar Farm (Greengage Farm)

I wrote recently about the TEC Register and will be publishing twice weekly any sizeable new schemes added to it. Today's main addition is a 500MW Solar Farm and Storage scheme in Bedfordshire.

As I said in my last piece on the subject, the Transmission Energy Capacity (TEC) Register is hard to monitor and one has to manually search line by line to find new schemes - there is no public announcement. However, with the help of an exceedingly clever friend, I have found a way to speed this up and will, therefore, be able to publish any and all new schemes of substantial size. This is important because, currently, nobody proactively does this. It will, occasionally, throw up false positives - schemes which come on and off the register, so I apologise in advance if I break already broken news!

Photo by Mariana Proença on Unsplash

What looks to be today’s new addition is quite a big one. Connecting at the new National Grid Biggleswade 400kv Substation in the North Bedfordshire Parliamentary Constituency, represented by Richard Fuller MP, we have a new Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) scale Solar Farm and Storage scheme entering scoping. The project has been given a connection offer of 31/10/2034. The Biggleswade Substation is currently under construction, on land north of Dunton Lane, and is looking to go into operation in February of next year. The Google Maps screenshot below shows the location of the substation site.

Where the solar farm will be, or where they are trying to assemble land, doesn’t yet seem to be in the public domain. Looking at proposals elsewhere, it is usually within a 5 - 7 mile radius. The Company behind the proposal is Renewable Energy Systems Limited and the scheme name is Greengage Farm.

Taking the recently approved Sunnica Solar Farm in West Suffolk as a benchmark, a 500MW scheme is likely to be in the region of 1,500 - 2,000 acres in size depending on the proportion of battery storage to PV. This is a very rough guide and by no means exact.

While taking a look at this scheme, I thought I would see what else had also received connection offers at the new Biggleswade Substation. Sizeable schemes include:

1000MW (1GW) Solar and Storage scheme from Biggleswade 10 Renewables Limited, known as “Biggleswade” on the TEC Register. This is a sizeable scheme, double that of Greengage Farm, so feasibly as large as 3,000 - 4,000 acres (again a very rough guess). Surprisingly, I can find nothing online about this proposal either and it doesn’t yet seem to have had any press attention. Given the potential scale, the lack of attention is odd. This scheme has also been given a connection date from 2032.

249MW Solar and Storage scheme from NOVENTUM POWER SOLAR 7 LIMITED, known as “Noventum - Biggleswade” on the TEC Register. Noventum seem to be an established operator in this space, there is a lot of information on their website here although nothing as yet about Biggleswade. This is perhaps unsurprising as the scheme looks to have a connection offer for 2037.

200MW Storage scheme from Harmony Energy Ltd, known as Biggleswade BESS on the TEC Register. There is also a smaller 57MW scheme with same name on there being brought forward by Central Bedfordshire Council. The Council scheme has a connection offer for 2029 while Harmony’s is in 2035.

All of these schemes, and the new Greengage Farm scheme, are currently in “scoping”.

From what is currently on the the TEC Register at Biggleswade, like Yaxley and Bramford in Suffolk, it could well be a hub for multiple solar and battery storage schemes that will dominate the debate around land usage over the coming years.

I’ll finish with the health warning I put in my last piece about the TEC Register, just because something appears on there does not mean it will be built. There is more on the TEC Register than needs to be delivered but appearing on there is always the first step in the process of scoping, consultation and consent.