Britain reached 20 GW of solar with no CfD support

The UK reached 20 GW of solar capacity without a single standalone solar Contract for Difference, according to Modo Energy. The fleet was built under three successive regimes: the Feed-in Tariff for small-scale assets, Renewables Obligation Certificates for utility-scale projects through the mid-2010s, and then fully subsidy-free merchant development from roughly 2019 onward.

Modo's analysis points to collapsing module costs and the rise of co-located battery storage as the two structural enablers of the subsidy-free wave. Revenue stacking across wholesale energy, Balancing Mechanism, and capacity market contracts made the numbers work where a CfD floor was absent.

The open question is replicability. Capture price cannibalisation grows as solar penetration rises. The dynamic is already visible in GB half-hourly settlement data on high-irradiance days. Whether the next 20 GW can clear investment hurdles on the same merchant basis, or whether CfD AR7 will need to include solar at scale, is the policy tension Modo's piece sets up.