A UK community solar group has raised more than GBP 1 million ($1.3 million) to build a 3.5 MW solar park on a former coalmine site in Whiteborough, England. Big Solar Co-op has raised the funds through a bond offer launched on investing platform Ethex on June 26, exceeding its GBP 800,000 target.
The cooperative’s pitch to investors forecast a 5.5% annual return on a project, with funds used to transform the former opencast coal mine site using a mix of “ethically sourced and recycled solar panels.” Big Solar Co-op’s community energy consultant Richard Lane told pv magazine the project will use European-made solar sourced from warehouse stock, as well as second-life panels.
The fundraising success breathes new life into a formerly abandoned project. Lane said a commercial operator started developing the site in 2015, but the project was shelved. It was then acquired by a different community energy group, before Big Solar Co-op bought the Whiteborough project in 2023 and broke ground in spring 2025.
The cooperative expects to commission the Whiteborough plant before the end of the year, and exceeding the fundraising target should reduce the need to take on short-term bridging loans, according to Noël Lambert, content and community leader for Big Solar Co-op.
Lambert told pv magazine the site is the co-op’s first ground-mounted project, but Big Solar Co-op’s main offer is rooftop. The cooperative has deployed more than 1.2 MW across 12 rooftops since it was founded in 2019, on a mix of commercial and community properties. Big Solar Co-op exists partly to fill a gap that was left by the end of UK feed-in tariff in 2020, according to Lambert
“The end of the feed-in tariff – the subsidies from government – meant that people within the community energy sector could see that it was going to be essentially financially infeasible to set up new community energy co-ops and have just one or two assets,” Lambert said.
“It’s not that there aren’t community energy groups that are doing well,” she added. “They do exist, but they tend to be well established in areas with high social capital and they may be able to have paid staff and attract funding. Typically, they have time and capacity to access resources like grants.”
Crucially, according to Lambert, these groups were often set up before the end of the feed-in tariff meaning a stronger business case. For groups setting up today, “it’s very difficult,” she said.
With more than 1,100 members and a growing project pipeline, Big Solar Co-op expects to add a lot more solar capacity to Great Britain’s electricity grid soon – its rolling share offer for rooftop installations has raised around GBP 1.2 million to date. The cooperative said it has a more than 40 projects in its pipeline – including 26 with a multiple retailer – and has targeted delivering more than 100 MW capacity.
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