Construction of the 4.5MW solar farm will begin in July and the project expects to be generating power by September this year.
The project has already received more than £970,000 of investment and is aiming to raise a further £1.4 million to add to the bank funding, loans and social impact investors that make up the £4.1 million construction costs. The projected average annual return to investors is 5 per cent over the 25-year lifetime of the solar farm.
Southill Community Energy director Liz Reason said: “We’re very grateful to Solarcentury, a fantastic British business which is a world-leader in solar technology, for supporting our project by providing construction finance. This makes our financial model even stronger and gives added confidence to investors that 100 per cent of their money will be used to see the solar farm through to success.
Since the solar farm was granted planning consent in July 2015, it has been pre-accredited for the Feed-in Tariff and will be one of the last community solar schemes to be guaranteed the subsidy.