Designing Drainage For A Solar Farm In The UK With Strict Requirements

Solar farms are sprouting up all across the UK, and this green transition trend has become a bright spot in the UK’s economy. Converting greenfields into solar farms is a big change in how the land has traditionally been used, which means both regulators and everyday citizens are watching closely at how these new developments are implemented. This means drainage designers must follow every environmental rule and best practice and be at the top of their game to show how their nature-friendly implementations are backed by solid science.

Because Project Centre’s team of engineers long relied on the capabilities of MicroDrainage, they had been hesitant to switch to the next-generation InfoDrainage app. This is not uncommon. Engineers naturally become attached to their ways of working, particularly if they feel that they’ve locked down their workflows as a group, relying on trusted software to always spit out reliable results. This hesitance to begin anew is often bolstered by the argument that onboarding and learning new software tools could mean potential billable time lost, which is a legitimate fear. Or, as Principal Civil Engineer F. Javier Soto puts it, “Time is money.”

Ultimately, they wanted more power than MicroDrainage could provide, so their teams took the leap and collectively upgraded to InfoDrainage, which went more smoothly than expected. “A designer was new to this software as a whole, and in just two weeks, he was able to onboard with InfoDrainage to a surprising level,” says Soto. He credits the “extremely user-friendly” interface for the quick uptake. “It just makes sense when you get into it.”’