https://qz.com/1127099/the-cleve-hill-solar-farm-is-being-built-without-uk-government-subsidies/
[The next question becomes, 'when grid-scale wind and solar electricity
generation can be put into service without government subsidies
(happening now), when will oil, gas, coal and nuclear step up and also
swear off their litany of subsidies and sweetheart deals financed by
taxpayers?'
links and images in on-line article]
The UK’s biggest-ever solar farm will be built without government help
Akshat Rathi
November 11, 2017
Cleve Hill is set to become the UK’s biggest solar farm when it is built
in 2020. At a capacity of 350 MW, it will be able to produce more than
five times the power as the country’s current leader. And all this could
happen without government help.
Government subsidies for clean energy have worked wonderfully. Greater
demand for solar power means there is more money to research and develop
cheaper solar panels. The positive feedback loop has resulted in
stunning growth for solar power across the world.
But as solar power becomes cheaper, government assistance is likely to
be cut back. The UK, for instance, cut its subsidies for clean energy in
2016. Will the rapid growth in solar power be able to continue?
Though Cleve Hill is not huge by global standards—China’s biggest will
be nearly 10 times the size—it is a new kind of solar farm. Its 365
hectares of solar panels (about the same as 400 soccer fields) will
receive no government assistance. The companies building it, Hive Energy
and Wirsol Energy, are confident that falling costs of solar panels will
make the project economical.
Earlier this year, the UK opened what was the country’s first
subsidy-free solar farm near Flitwick, producing 10 MW of energy, but it
was an extension of an already existing solar farm, which was built
using subsidies. The Cleve Hill farm, then, would be the first fully
subsidy-free plant in the UK.
It’s a sign that cleaner energy production could continue to flourish
even without government assistance. And there’s a long way still to go:
Today, solar power provides merely 0.6% of all the world’s energy—with
more than 85% still provided by fossil fuels.