Danish renewables firm European Energy has announced that they will be constructing a $158 million solar farm that has been dubbed as the “largest” installation of its kind in Denmark and entire Northern Europe. The Danish company said it has won local council approval to build the 300 MW solar project in the municipality of Aabenraa in southern Jutland.
The solar farm will be built near planned data centres as well as a major regional transformer station in the municipality of Aabenraa in Southern Jutland, it said in a statement. It will deliver enough green power to supply more than 75,000 households, European Energy said. Construction of the project will begin early next year and is scheduled to start operations before the end of 2021.
In September 2020, the firm announced plans to build a 170 MW solar farm in southern Sweden next year. European Energy has installed 1.5 GW of wind and solar capacity in 11 countries. Overall, the installed solar capacity in Denmark stands at about 5 GW, up from 3 GW a year ago, and could reach 16 GW in 2025, according to Danish transmission grid operator Energinet.dk.
Large utility-scale solar PV plants are not as common in densely populated areas in Europe as in other parts of the world, such as in the US and Asia, where land constraints are less of an issue. In Europe, utility EnBW is currently also constructing the largest solar farm in Denmark’s southern neighbor Germany, the 187MW Weesow-Willmersdorf north of Berlin. Construction of the Aabenraa project is expected to begin in early 2021 with a grid connection to take place before the end of 2021. European Energy chief executive Knud Erik Andersen said, “the Danish government has set ambitious goals for a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 requiring a significant growth in renewables, partly driven by an expansion of utility-scale solar farms. Wind and solar generation met up to 50% of Denmark’s power demand last year, according to figures from grid operator Energinet.
