Ashford to build and run solar farm to raise revenue

Ashford Borough Council will borrow £6m from the Public Works Loan Board to build a solar farm it says will produce a return of 6.7% a year to fund services.

A growing number of councils have already ventured into solar farm ventures to raise revenue, but Ashford says it will become the first to build and run its own facility.

The council’s cabinet agreed the plans which will be developed on 20ha of agricultural land owned by the council at Shadoxhurst.

Graham Galpin, portfolio holder for corporate property at the authority said: “At Ashford Borough Council we are proactively seeking ways in which we can secure funding in order to continue providing the services our residents need.

“We also feel it is our duty to take the lead on improving air quality by producing electricity through greener, more sustainable means.”

The solar farm will join the council’s property portfolio, currently made up of office blocks, a shopping centre, Elwick Place cinema and leisure complex, industrial estates and a business park.

It would provide 900KWh of energy which would be sold to the National Grid.

According to an officer’s report which went to the cabinet: “The size of the system means that the rate earned by selling to the grid is basic, but it is expected to change as the network requires greater resilience as power stations continue to age without replacement.”

Capital costs of construction will comprise the installation of the panels and the plant to collect and convert the electricity generated from the panels to alternating current.

Ashford envisages repaying the PWLB loan over 11 years, it said.

The council prepared its plans after procuring advice from the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) in order to assess the suitability of the site for solar development.

The scheme will be subject to a full planning process before it can be built, with the costs of consultancy estimated at £45,000.

In December, Swindon Borough Council’s wholly owned subsidiary, Public Power Solutions (PPS), began operating a solar farm to provide power to the council’s recycling centre’s solid recovered fuel (SRF) plant and depot.

In October, Warrington Borough Council agreed £58.7m of borrowing to build two solar farms to raise an estimated £150m in revenue over the next 30 years – returning an estimated 8.21% and 11%.

In 2016, Warrington led a group of four councils in a £60m bond investment in Swindon Solar Park, one of the UK’s largest solar farms.

A new 12MW solar farm built by Cambridgeshire Council Council in partnership with the private sector, with an estimated return of £1m a year, was opened in 2017.

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