Birmingham firm completes work on £12m solar farm

BIRMINGHAM electrical services contractor JT Hawkes has completed installation work on Britain’s largest solar power plant.

The company designed, installed and commissioned the £12m Westmill Solar Farm in only six weeks.

The renewable energy project is now providing electricity to 1,500 homes in Oxfordshire.

The five-megawatt solar power plant has created Britain’s first combined ‘green energy zone’, with the farm already generating electricity through five wind turbines.

Combined energy output will be sufficient to power more than 40,000 homes for at least the next 25 years.  

The Witton firm worked with German photovoltaic panel supplier Abakus on the solar farm for clients Blue Energy, from Alderley Edge and Low Carbon Solar, of Cirencester.

The work involved the installation of almost 23,000 state-of-the-art PV solar plates, altogether covering 30 acres of land.

J T Hawkes designed and installed the entire power distribution network, which included the building of trenches for 184,000 metres of solar cable and 32-kilovolt power cabling.

The brief also involved fitting inverters to convert the electricity from direct to alternating current for feeding into the national grid via two electricity substations.

Mark Wells, head of design & delivery for Low Carbon Solar, said: “This project has been delivered at record speed and with challenges both large and small but a constant throughout has been the support of JT Hawkes.”

John Hawkes, managing director of the company he set up in 1978, said: “Our engineers rose to the challenge of using the latest technology to complete Britain’s largest solar power plant – and worked round the clock to get it finished in such a short period of time. We are delighted to be part of such a landmark scheme.”

Close