Scottish Water has completed a £1.4 million solar project at a site in Inverness, providing renewable energy for essential wastewater services.

Nearly 1,500 solar panels have been installed on the ground and roof of the Longman Drive wastewater pumping station, which transports wastewater from thousands of Inverness customers to Allanfearn for treatment.

The panels are expected to generate approximately 0.74GWh of green energy annually, enough to boil 3.3 million kettles, and will save 101 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Renewable energy will now meet around a quarter of the site's power needs, with surplus energy being sold back to the national grid.


The project was led by Scottish Water Horizons and delivered by Absolute Solar & Wind.

"We are delighted to have completed work on this major solar project in Inverness which will see a substantial proportion of the energy needed to operate this site now met by renewable power," said Scottish Water Horizons Project Manager Tom Clayton.

"In the past three years we have installed 14.4GWh of solar energy across Scottish Water sites, compared to 9.6GWh in the previous 12 which underlines our commitment to ramping up the pace and scale of our renewables programme as we respond to the climate crisis and focus on meeting our net zero targets by 2040," Clayton added.

Scottish Water Operations Team Leader Gary Henderson said: "This pumping station helps transfer the waste water from around 90,000 customers in Inverness and the surrounding area to be treated at our site at Allanfearn, making it a huge consumer of energy.

It is great that almost a quarter of the energy it uses will now come from solar power, and that the scheme will also see some renewable energy being sold back to the national grid that can be accessed in the local area."