Wymeswold Airfield Solar Farm is one of the largest solar power projects in the country. Rated at 35MW, it occupies 150  acres of the WW2 Wymeswold Airfield. It is owned by the Foresight Group and in April hosted a well-attended visit by a group from the IET East Midlands Retired Members section.

 

 

The visit started with an excellent lunch at the Windmill Inn in Wymeswold, after which Saadat Ullam, Foresight’s Asset Manager for the site, gave a presentation about the site and what we could expect to see. There are 130,000 individual solar panels on the site, arranged into blocks of 1.2MW. The DC power from each block is converted to AC by solid-state inverters and transformed up to 33kV. The site has a single 33kV connection to the local Grid.

 

When we arrived at the site, Roy Strong showed us around the solar panel arrays, one of the 1.2MW inverter containers and the 33kV Grid connection point, answering all our questions as we went along. Our warmest thanks go to Saadat Ullman and to Roy Strong for allowing us to visit and for their informative and enjoyable presentations. As demand for places exceeded supply, it is anticipated that another visit will be arranged for next year. 

 

The Retired Members section aims to promote social and technical contacts between retired members of the IET and their guests. In the last session, ‘16/’17, members visited the Horological Society’s headquarters and museum outside Newark-on-Trent, enjoyed a guided tour around the parkland at Calke Abbey and had a back-stage tour at the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-on-Avon. The section is arranging a number of diverse visits for 2017/18, details of which will be published when they are firmed up.