With renewable power becoming a more prominent discussion point on the Scottish government’s agenda every year, Scotland has officially opened its largest solar farm to date, hammering home the country’s continued commitment to utilising renewable forms of energy and greatly increasing the nation’s yearly energy output.

The 13MW power plant, which was developed on 70 sections of land at Errol Estate in Perthshire and incorporates 55,000 solar boards, first went live for energy production during the month of May, but has only recently opened now that the necessary security checks and health and safety provisions have been thoroughly tried and tested. Paul Wheelhouse, the Scottish government’s pastor for Business, Advancement and Energy, was at hand to formally open the new solar farm which had been under construction since early January.

While construction of this new solar farm took a little under six months, when you factor in concept pitching, lobbying and contract negotiations, the project actually took a lot longer to come to fruition. Indeed, using Errol Estate for solar farm development first came up on the Scottish Government’s list of things to do way back in the latter stages of 2011, when Thomas MacMillan spearheaded the initiative. While the project was initially intended to bring employment to Scotland’s beleaguered workforce, much of the work was eventually carried out by Canadian Solar.

Mr MacMillan said he was “pleased” to see the project finally achieving completion. He said of the project, “It has been four years really taking shape and demonstrates that substantial scale solar in Scotland keeps on being financially practical.”

He added, “Solar innovation has a far more noteworthy part to play in Scotland’s energy blend than numerous individuals may understand. Because of diminishing establishment costs, and an atmosphere of backing from Scottish government, we keep on seeing a craving from designers to take forward new advancement destinations, even with lessening sponsorship support from the Westminster government.”

Mr Wheelhouse echoed MacMillan’s enthusiasm about the project:

“This exceptionally considerable and noteworthy task is confirmation that extensive scale solar photovoltaic frameworks function admirably on the east shoreline of Scotland. An assortment of associations are keeping on sourcing solar locales the nation over, with a perspective to growing monetarily feasible plans.”

Solar Farms work by capturing a portion of the sun’s energy via a large array of photovoltaic solar panels. The energy collected is run through an inverter which converts it into AC power (the standard form of domestic electricity). This electricity is then managed through a switchboard before being sent to the national grid, where it can be accessed by domestic customers. More details on this process can be found here.