Danish developer European Energy has announced plans to develop more than 500MW of unsubsidised solar-plus-storage projects in the UK — ten times the amount currently installed in the country — in a joint venture with London-based asset manager Armstrong Capital Management.

European Energy tells Recharge that one 5MW PV-plus-battery project is “shovel-ready” and awaiting financial closure, while the remaining projects are at various stages of development, with the company having secured land lease rights for all potential sites.

Income from the projects would be through a mixture of power-purchase agreements and merchant sales, a spokesman explained.

“We have not bought into this portfolio because we think we’re going to make a fortune out of the storage part,” he said, explaining that it will help to build experience that could then be utilised in other parts of the world where European Energy has ambitions, including the US, Australia and Canada.

No time scale has been set for the deployment, with the projects to be built out “in the coming years”.

Only two subsidy-free solar-plus-storage projects have been built in the UK seem to have been built to date — Anesco’s 10MW PV and 6MW battery Clayhill facility in Milton Keynes, central England, and a 34.7MW PV and 30MW battery system in York, northern England.

The UK Solar Trade Association estimates that about 200MW of subsidy-free solar was deployed in the UK last year.