The exciting thing about the Aquinas with the second reservoir is that it's so different,
not only in terms of what we've done before, but in terms of what the rest of the world
has done before.
Nor is it the largest and first deep water reservoir with floating solar on it.
100% of electricity has been used by Thames Water.
We've undercut the price that they were paying for their electricity.
They've got guaranteed supply and we've fixed the price for 25 years.
So they know exactly how much they're paying, not only now, but well into the future.
This is one of the largest water treatment works in the UK.
It is an energy intensive business.
Everything that comes through that water treatment work has to be treated and then it has to
be pumped out through to the customer.
Across the UK, actually, the water industry is about 2% of electricity demand.
What we're trying to do is provide that water at the lowest cost we can to the customer,
but also reduce greenhouse gases, so that's when renewables come into play.
The installation here at the QE2 reservoir is 6 megawatt peak.
That means it's built up nearly 24,000 individual solar panels, floating on a platform made
up of over 60,000 individual floats.
Using a system like this drew on a wide range of light sources' existing skills and experience.
We had to build new ramps, rafts, we had to employ divers in order to ensure that the
system was built on time efficiently and safely and securely.
The beauty of solar is it's reliable, the sun always shines, in this case we're feeding
the energy directly into the water treatment works, so there's no losses from the grid.
We're generating the power right where it needs to be used, so that's got a cost benefit
and that's got an environmental benefit.
Light source have funded the scheme which is great and we've got a volume of electricity
for the next 25 years and we know what the price is.
It's good for planning for everybody.
The ongoing operations and maintenance of the plant will be undertaken by light sources'
own operations and maintenance team.
They're a team of dedicated PV engineers directly employed by light source who have
specialisms in maintaining the sort of equipment.
It's quite difficult to get the right partnerships in place and we've got that right with the
light source, they've worked well with Thames and actually what makes these types of projects
is the partnership working all the way through.
