{"id":223556,"date":"2025-06-29T08:44:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T08:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/223556\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T08:44:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T08:44:15","slug":"uks-largest-solar-farm-to-power-london-transport-in-green-energy-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/223556\/","title":{"rendered":"UK\u2019s largest solar farm to power London Transport in green energy deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK\u2019s largest solar farm is to power some of London\u2019s transport network after Transport for London (TfL<\/a>) signed a 15-year supply agreement.<\/p>\n

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The Longfield Solar Farm<\/a> is being built just outside northeast Chelmsford in Essex, and when completed, it could contribute approximately 400 GWh per year to the national grid by the end of the decade. It\u2019s being constructed on land considered<\/a> to have poor to moderate quality for farming, so the loss of arable land would have a negligible impact on food supply.\u00a0An onsite battery energy storage system (BESS) will also ensure that when too much energy is being generated, it can be imported off the grid and released when there is demand, thus helping to maintain grid balance and resilience.<\/p>\n

The new solar farm will provide approximately 20% of its output to TfL, which is about 80 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity per year, and represents approximately 5% of the 1.6TWh that TfL uses annually.<\/p>\n

With the solar farm near Chelmsford, they won\u2019t be running electricity cables from Essex to London, but will use a \u201csleeved PPA\u201d agreement. That\u2019s where electricity from the solar farm is sent into the National Grid, but is credited to TfL instead of being\u00a0treated as generic grid electricity. TfL then draws its supply from the National Grid as usual, but through accounting and billing, it\u2019s as if they\u2019re using the solar energy.<\/p>\n

Rollo Maschietto, Interim Head of Power at the REA (Renewable Energy Association), said: \u201cThis is exactly the kind of leadership we need from major public bodies to unlock investment in clean energy infrastructure. TfL is helping to bring forward large-scale UK solar \u2013 the cheapest and quickest form of new electricity generation. The more solar we deploy, the lower bills will be and the less exposed we\u2019ll be to volatile fossil fuel markets. This is a blueprint for how the public sector can get behind the energy transition while supporting green jobs and strengthening our energy security.\u201d<\/p>\n

TfL\u2019s long-term Energy Purchasing Strategy is to purchase up to 70% of the total electricity it needs through PPAs, with the remainder mainly through a flexible green tariff. This will contribute to the wider ambition to use 100% renewable source electricity across TfL\u2019s operations by 2030.<\/p>\n

TfL signed this 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with EDF Renewables, which ensures TfL has a fixed cost for the electricity and guarantees the same for EDF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK\u2019s largest solar farm is to power some of London\u2019s transport network after Transport for London (TfL)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-223556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114765775829226116","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}