The projects granted DCOs include Mallard Pass, Sunnica and Gate Burton. Image: NextEnergy Capital.

Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for Energy Security and Net Zero, granted development consent orders (DCOs) to three solar-based nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs), totalling over 1.3GW of renewable energy generation capacity.

The newly elected Labour government confirmed on Friday (12 July) that Miliband had given consent for the construction of Gate Burton (Lincolnshire), Mallard Pass (Lincolnshire), and Sunnica (Suffolk/Cambridgeshire).

Gate Burton, a 500MW solar and energy storage park being pursued by Low Carbon, has been proposed near EDF’s former coal-fired power station Cottam, which shut down its operations in 2019. The project aims to utilise the capacity availability in the area via the substation.

Along with solar generation, Gate Burton will include an on-site energy storage system, which will provide balancing services—the system will allow generation to be stored when demand is low and exported when it is high.

Mallard Pass is being developed by Windel Energy and Canadian Solar and is expected to generate around 350MW of solar energy. The project will cover 880 hectares of land on either side of the East Coast Main Line near Essendine, partly in South Kesteven in Lincolnshire and partly in Rutland. It is to be connected to the grid via the existing Ryhall substation.

The Mallard Pass project had previously been met with some opposition from the local community, particularly from the MP for Rutland and Melton Alicia Kearns, who has held her seat since 2019. She spoke out against the solar farm in a debate in the House of Commons on UK-Taiwan Friendship and Co-operation on 10 February 2022, stating that the site is “being developed by a de facto Chinese company with supply chains reaching into Xinjiang”.

The final project, the 500MW solar-plus-storage Sunnica Energy Farm, is being pursued by Sunnica and will see a large-scale solar farm and co-located battery storage asset constructed in Sunnica East and Sunnica West on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border.

The proposal also looks to include three 132kV private substations and a 132kV cable route that will need to be laid to connect the site to the Burwell National Grid substation.

Interestingly, Claire Coutinho, former Secretary of State for the Conservative government, delayed the original DCO applications for both the Sunnica and Mallard Pass solar projects.

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