Luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) today (August 20) has opened a new PV energy plant on solar energy at the British head office.
The new Solar PV energy plant, located at JLR’s Head Offices in Gaydon, has a generation capacity of 18 MW and will be able to deliver around 31% of the site’s energy demand. The installation mounted on the ground is spread over 26 hectares of land; JLR states that it has worked to stimulate biodiversity in the area by planting native wild flowers underneath and to recover between the panels and hedges and thus yielded a net profit of biodiversity “far above” the mandatory level of 10%.
The Gaydon site is one of the three British solar projects that JLR will complete in the coming months as part of the continuous efforts of the low -carbon. The development is also expected to close this fall on a new extensive PV installation on the roof at JLR’s Wolverhampton Electric Propulsion Manufacturing Center (EPMC). This development will build on an existing solar array on site and will contain more than 18,000 panels with a combined capacity of 10.7 MW. Once the expansion is completed, it can generate around 9,512 MWh electricity every year, enough to meet nearly 40% of the energy needs of the site.
Finally, next year, JLR will install more than 10 MW of Solarports in the Halewood production factory in Merseyside, which offers EV -charging for employees and visitors via solar walks that cover the most important parking garages for the entrances to the site. According to JLR, once completed, this is the largest carport for solar energy in the UK. This follows one £ 500 million investment in the Halewood factory In September last year, in which the site was expanded and re -applied to make the growing EV production possible, as well as the addition of a PV installation on the roof that can feed around 10% of the energy requirements of the site every year.
Andrea Debbane, Chief Sustainability Officer at JLR, stated that the efforts of the carbon as they are important for the company, because “they immediately reduce our worldwide operational emissions and help us bring us closer to our net zero goal, while they deliver tangible value today and for the long -term”. She added that the step to grow the self -generated renewable energy sources of the company is part of the “strategic shift of the company to get more control over our energy mix against a background of uncertainty”.
Other car manufacturers also consider the benefits of PV energy plants for solar energy while working on their goals for the low -carbon arm. In January, Ford Motor Company gave a 5.2MWP Solar PV -Array on the Dunton campusThe largest British research and development facility of the company. The Array delivers approximately 10% of the annual 55,000 MWh electricity story on the campus. Previously, Ford Motor Company had previously developed a PV energy plant on solar energy on its Daventry site, and a Ford Factory Manufacturing Gearboxes, located on the same site as JLR’s Halewood facility, is expected to have a solar PV -Array installed this year.
