• BSR plans to use its new EUR 130m financing facility to expand its UK pipeline and pursue acquisitions amid improving grid certainty.
• The company expects to have nearly 700 MW operational by early 2028 and is preparing up to 120 MW of projects for the next CfD auction round.
• BSR believes the UK remains a top destination for renewable investment, while batteries, corporate PPAs and data centres are expected to play an increasing role in the market’s evolution.

Having completed a EUR 130m holdco financing with Eiffel Investment Group in June , British Solar Renewables is now focused on deploying capital across both its existing UK development pipeline and into selective acquisitions, buoyed both by greater grid clarity in the UK and the expectation of at least a couple more CfD allocation rounds, chief executive Tim Humpage told NPM in a recent interview.

“The holdco financing completed with Eiffel has allowed us not only to release equity invested by ICG but to continue developing our pipeline and strategically look at other M&A,” Humpage said, emphasising that the facilities provide additional flexibility while preserving what he describes as a deliberately conservative capital structure.

Indeed, rather than leveraging the wider business, BSR has ringfenced debt within a portfolio of operating and construction-stage special purpose vehicles, leaving the broader platform largely unencumbered.

“We’re a very clean business from a debt point of view,” he says.

That structure also gives the company considerable flexibility to continue expanding.

Existing senior lenders can finance additional projects through accordion facilities, while discussions are already underway with banks about increasing lending capacity as the portfolio grows.

“Banks are all about relationships,” Humpage says. “We talk to our four banks every month, if not every fortnight, about our strategy.

Competitive advantage

Although BSR has built its reputation as a developer, and has its own in-house EPC and O&M capabilities, it targets the acquisition of development-stage projects where it believes it can materially enhance value before construction.

“We’ve always been good at onboarding acquisitions, but we focus on projects where we believe we can genuinely add value,” Humpage says.

The differentiator, he argues, is BSR’s vertically integrated model.

“We can add far more value through our design process than we would with operational assets.”

That philosophy has already been demonstrated through several acquisitions over the years.

Humpage points to the 72 MW Shotwick solar park as one example. The project had been designed as a roughly 45 MW scheme before BSR redesigned and substantially increased its capacity, before it was sold on to Foresight Solar Fund in 2017.

Strong market appetite

BSR’s recent acquisitions – including its purchase of the 56 MWp Breden solar project in Essex in May – have all been secured through competitive auction processes, underscoring the strength of demand for UK renewable development assets despite softer power price conditions elsewhere in Europe.

According to Humpage, BSR’s success depended less on headline valuation than on providing sellers with confidence around execution.

“If we didn’t have that differentiation where we have our own EPC and O&M capability, I don’t think we would have won [these processes].”

“The price that we give sellers at NBO stage is the price we finish at. We do our due diligence before NBO, and we do it in-house. It takes risk away from the sellers.”

Humpage believes the UK remains far from becoming the buyer’s market seen in parts of continental Europe, where depressed wholesale prices and concerns over cannibalisation have weakened asset valuations.

“I’d say there’s still a lot of strong demand in the UK for portfolios,” he says. “We’d rather have a busy market because competition means the UK is still seen as a desirable place to invest.”

While listed infrastructure funds have struggled over recent years, he sees no shortage of interest in pipelines and portfolios from private equity-backed investors and strategic buyers.

Grid reform creates acquisition opportunities

While the National Energy System Operator’s (NESO) grid reform process has been bedevilled by much documented delays and processing issues, Gate 2 phase 1 offers very much started to come through over the course of H1, and this is now driving the UK M&A market.

Indeed, many developers delayed sales while waiting for confirmation of their grid positions, but as offers have begun arriving, projects are increasingly being marketed even before everything is finalised, Humpage notes.

“There’s been an awful lot that’s come to market, even from people who know they’ve got their phase 1 offer but are still waiting for the paperwork.”

BSR is currently focusing exclusively on projects that have secured Gate 2 phase 1 grid offers, arguing that these assets now offer significantly greater certainty.

“We’re only looking at projects with Gate 2 phase 1 offers because I’ve already got a pipeline of projects that I know are NESO phase 2.”

Approaching one gigawatt

Construction activity across the portfolio continues at pace.

BSR currently has six projects under construction and expects to have almost 700 MW operational by the first quarter of 2028.

Planning appeals could lift that significantly further.

“I’m in four appeals at the moment. We’ve already won one, and we’re waiting on three more.”

Those projects would add around 120 MW, taking operational capacity towards 900MW by the end of 2028.

“Not quite the gigawatt I was aiming for,” Humpage says, “but we’re getting there.”

The growth strategy meanwhile also extends beyond solar.

BSR has quietly become an active wind developer over the past two years and expects to submit between 300MW and 500MW of wind projects into the next NESO Gate 2 allocation process later this year.

Investor confidence returns

Perhaps the biggest shift Humpage sees is renewed confidence in the UK market among investors.

Following several years characterised by rising interest rates, supply chain inflation and regulatory uncertainty, he believes capital is flowing back into UK renewables.

“We’re seeing much more activity within the market generally and much more appetite from investors and new investors coming into the UK.”

He argues that the combination of CfDs, clearer grid reform and heightened concerns around energy security have strengthened the UK’s investment proposition.

“I’d put the UK in the global top five markets from a risk perspective.”

He also suggests geopolitical uncertainty has unexpectedly benefited renewable investment.

“I don’t know whether it’s Contracts for Difference, NESO, or Donald Trump becoming the greatest ambassador renewable energy has ever had by increasing focus on energy security.”

CfD benefits

If acquisitions and grid reform are boosting BSR’s near-term growth, CfDs remain the cornerstone of its financing strategy.

“”If you add up all the AR6 projects [held in H1 2024] that are now BSR projects, we took just under 10% of the whole of AR6 from a solar point of view – we were the biggest,” Humpage emphasises.

The company is now preparing to enter allocation round eight (AR8) with up to four projects totalling around 120 MW, following a deliberate decision to sit out AR7 (results for which were published in January 2026) because those projects were already in negotiations for corporate PPAs, he adds.

For Humpage, the rationale remains straightforward. While merchant revenues may ultimately generate greater returns, today’s debt market continues to favour the long-term certainty provided by the government’s 20-year inflation-linked support mechanism.

“Revenue is entirely based around what the banks are comfortable with,” he says. “Our power plants would probably be more valuable if they were all merchant and we all took merchant risk. That’s simply not where the debt market is.”

Although Humpage expects AR8 to attract competition broadly similar to AR7, with resulting similar strike prices, he believes one significant uncertainty remains.

“The only unknown is that our new chancellor [John Healey] is ex-defence secretary. Media reports suggested he had pressed for around GBP 10bn of additional defence spending. There is a logic that, now he’s chancellor, he may be more inclined to find that money and give it to his old department.”

There is therefore a scenario that DESNZ is one of the easy targets from which to find part of the GBP 10bn – which could therefore mean a reduction in the AR8 or AR9 budget.

Regardless, despite BSR’s reliance on the mechanism today, Humpage believes the industry should begin preparing for life beyond CfDs.

Post-CfD world

“My crystal ball says we’ve probably got another two years,” he says. “By the time we get to AR10, that might be our last CfD.”

Whether or not that prediction proves accurate, he argues governments will become increasingly reluctant to continue underwriting renewable revenues indefinitely as the sector matures.

“It feels like government is going to be less and less able to support that sort of mechanism, and the market needs to adapt to a world post-CfD.”

Corporate PPAs continue to play an important role within BSR’s portfolio, even if they now occupy a more selective position alongside CfDs.

The company is finalising agreements with two additional blue-chip offtakers – for 49.9 MW Knowl Green and 19 MW Dengie, both in Essex – after previously signing one of the UK’s more prominent corporate renewable agreements with a well-known media group.

Yet Humpage stresses that the decision between a CfD and a PPA has become increasingly one-sided from a financing perspective.

“A 20-year inflation-linked CfD is becoming less and less of a discussion compared with a PPA.”

That does not diminish the importance of the corporate market.

Instead, he argues the challenge has shifted towards structuring increasingly sophisticated contracts.

“We’re finding that all of our current PPAs need to be shaped.”

Rather than buying intermittent solar generation directly, corporate customers increasingly require suppliers capable of delivering electricity when they actually consume it.

That means combining solar output with flexible generation or storage through intermediaries that can shape the delivery profile.

Batteries become a commercial necessity

Unlike markets such as Australia, Spain or Germany, where developers are rapidly retrofitting batteries onto existing solar plants, BSR sees little commercial justification for widespread UK retrofits while projects continue to benefit from long-term contracted revenues.

“You would only retrofit DC-coupled batteries onto UK solar when the revenue requires you to.”

As long as projects remain protected by CfDs, or successor mechanisms, the incentive simply is not strong enough.

“The only people I think will be retrofitting in the UK will be people running merchant assets.”

Nevertheless, batteries already form an integral part of BSR’s longer-term strategy.

Four of its thirteen construction projects include AC-coupled battery storage, including the 60 MW Little Crow project, while all new developments are now being designed around DC-coupled systems.

“Anything going forward, we’re developing four-hour batteries on a DC basis.”

Australia provides a glimpse of where Humpage believes the UK is heading.

“There is no such thing as a generation plant in Australia anymore. They’re all hybrids.”

Data centres may reshape battery values

Humpage also noted a potential growing relationship between battery storage and data centres development.

Three years ago BSR halted standalone battery development in Britain after concluding that grid queues would make many projects unfeasible.

“We did our own grid analysis before NESO and – [given the massive oversupply of projects being developed] realised there was no point developing standalone batteries because the earliest we’d connect them was around 2035.”

However, he believes existing battery portfolios may now hold unexpected strategic value.

“If you own a battery pipeline, you could effectively put your data centre behind your battery.”

Doing so would allow operators to secure grid access years earlier than waiting for entirely new connections.

“I’m slightly surprised that no major data centre company has bought somebody with a battery pipeline.”

ESG becomes a competitive advantage

BSR also puts a big emphasis on its environmental and governance performance, not simply as a corporate responsibility exercise but as a way of winning revenue contracts.

Last year the company achieved an average biodiversity net gain (BNG) of 164% across its projects, far exceeding the UK’s statutory requirement of 10%.

“The reason companies came to us [for PPAs] is because of what we do around biodiversity net gain.”

“The level of detail we’re able to give PPA offtakers enables them to satisfy their own investors and ESG committees.”

The direct pricing premium may be relatively modest.

“Maybe it adds a pound to the PPA.”

But Humpage argues that misses the wider commercial picture.

“I view it less as a one-pound premium and more as the difference between getting the PPA or not getting the PPA.”

Solar PPAs running for 10 years in the UK are currently being negotiated in the circa GBP 70 /MWh range, Humpage says.

The company’s approach to PPAs also reflects a broader emphasis on long-term relationships.

Humpage says BSR consciously avoided submitting certain projects into AR7 because negotiations with corporate buyers were already well advanced, despite recognising that a CfD might ultimately have offered more attractive financing terms.

“We would never walk away from a PPA after agreeing terms just because we’d won a CfD. Our reputation needs to be better than that.”