Yingli Green Energy has sold a 18.8MW solar power plant in Essex, UK, to NextEnergy Solar Fund.

Situated on the former Boxted Airfield in the north of Colchester, the solar plant is spread across 50 acres of land.

The plant, which was completed and connected to the grid in March this year, is estimated to generate enough energy to power about 5,700 homes in the UK per year.

Yingli Solar chairman and CEO Liansheng Miao said: "The sale of this project is in line with Yingli’s global strategy to move downstream by developing and selling power generation assets at an attractive return, and provides us with additional capital to fund our growing global project development business, which includes a qualified utility-scale project pipeline of nearly 300 MW outside of China.

"Through strong cooperation with our partners we are committed to push the project development business forward with the core principles of ‘less capital investment and a diversified service portfolio."

NextEnergy Solar Fund is a Guernsey incorporated investment firm, which owns operational solar photovoltaic projects in the UK.

Yingli Green Energy is based in Baoding, China with over 30 regional subsidiaries and branch offices. It has distributed over 13GW solar panels to global customers.