UK water business seeks solar energy from large scale, rooftop and floating plants

• Southern Water has issued a request for information to source solar energy through bilateral power purchase agreements. The business is thinking about buying power from a blend of generation facilities.

British water company Southern Water has issued a request for information (RFI) in an attempt to source solar energy, including from floating PV projects.

Southern - that works in Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent - wants to sign power purchase agreements (PPAs) for solar power to elevate the renewable energy percentage of its energy mix from its present 16.5 percent to 24% by the end of March 2023. To be able to achieve and surpass this goal, Southern Water are seeking to contract with a provider or providers for the full end-to-end process of a solar PPA, without capital expenditure, for a first tranche of 28 sites to make no less than 10 MW by means of a combo of ground-mounted, rooftop and floating arrays (site dependent), as the RFI document states. It's not clear, however, if the mentioned sites are possessions of the business or other unspecified sites where the projects might be found.

Power suppliers have until January 10 to state an interest.

Southern's biggest shareholder is JP Morgan Asset Management, which owns 40 percent of the company. UBS Asset Management, Hermes Infrastructure Funds and Whitehelm Capital have 22%, 21% and 8%, respectively. The utility operates 91 water treatment works and 13,870 kilometers of water mains, along with 365 wastewater treatment works and 39,594 kilometers of sewers.

The firm switched on its very first, and so far only solar assets - with a total generation capacity of 4.2 MW - in large water treatment centres in October 2017. Those plants account for the 16.5 percent renewables share of Southern's power blend mentioned previously.