Public Power Solutions (PPS) and the Science Museum Group have started construction of a 50 MW solar farm in England.
The Wroughton Airfield solar park was granted planning permission in 2015 by then-Communities and Local Government Minister Eric Pickles. It will be built on 178 acres of land at a former World War 2 airfield in Wiltshire and comprise 150 000 solar panels.
The Science Museum owns the airfield while PPS, a subsidiary of Swindon Borough Council, took the project through the planning process. Commissioning is expected to take place in spring 2016.
The government "called-in" the Wroughton planning application in 2014 over concerns about the size and impact of the scheme, but Pickles ruled that its contribution to the UK's renewable energy targets outweighed "the less than substantial harm" that would be caused to the landscape.
Pickles also noted that the proposed PV farm site is brownfield and cannot in its own right be regarded to be of high environmental value.
The Wroughton Airfield site is used by the Science Museum to store thousands of objects and texts from its collections.
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