LOCATION: UK

SWG has been involved with large scale solar parks since ~2012. Our involvement in this sector stemmed from the first 'feed-in tariff' wave of developments and our existing relationships with leading renewables firms that were diversifying from wind to solar. 

Developing our knowledge of the specific design requirements solar parks require helped us understand and meet clients' requirements from geotechnical assessments. We then continued to invest in and develop our in-house capabilities to enable us to provide a comprehensive service to this industry as it grew. This included developing our own innovative and cost effective pile testing methods and detailed corrosively assessments.

To date we have completed hundreds of large scale solar parks across the UK and Europe. These have ranged from <1MW to >250MW in size, including the UK's largest solar farm.

Looking forward, a lot more of the favourable development sites have been taken up and focus is now turning to more challenging sites such as former coal mines, brownfield land, soft peat areas etc. The SWG team uses out traditional geotechnical understanding, our experience of developing solar parks across the UK and our innovative approach to help developers overcome these challenges and deliver cost effective, engineering led schemes. 

Our scope of work is summarised below:

• Desk studies / initial site appraisals

• Window sampling / dynamic probing

• Pile testing (both discrete and full scale)

• Electrical resistivity testing

• Thermal resistivity testing

• Track design

• Foundation recommendations for ancillary structures (DNO / sub-stations etc)

• Corrosion Assessments

• Soakaway testing

• Land quality / contamination assessments

References from leading solar developers, technical assessors and EPC’s can be provided on request.

Please get in touch to see how we can help.