Question: Who is Julian Elsworth?

Julian Elsworth: My background is in engineering and after getting my master’s degree in renewables at in 2003, I first spent time installing off-grid solar systems in UK and Spain before moving to an engineering consultancy in London. Part of the role was Technical Advisor to a number of the early FiT solar farms being built in 2010/11 and that was my first introduction to utility scale solar.

I joined Foresight in 2013, just after FSFL listed on the London Stock Exchange. It was a great time to join, the fund had just raised £150 million, and we were buying and building our first solar assets. At that early stage, the portfolio team was the bridge between the fund managers and our external technical advisors.

Outside of work, I'm mostly based in Lancaster, right by the Irish Sea, and fishing in Morecambe Bay is one of my favourite things to do. It started as an activity with the kids and took off for us during Covid – when it was one of the few outdoor activities allowed. Now, my youngest son is getting back into it so we are out most weekends.

Q: How has your role changed as the portfolio matured?

JE: The role has developed as the portfolio has evolved. It’s still an asset management position, but more portfolio-led now. We oversee the asset managers and operators and look at all technical and commercial aspects across the portfolio.

We've got a fantastic team of engineers and asset managers, and we wouldn’t be able to able to maintain our track record of operational excellence without them.

As the sites have aged, the focus is shifting to enhancements and repowering. That’s to ensure our assets are still performing as they should. We're continually developing our repowering strategy, looking two or three years ahead at what will need doing next.

On the whole, the portfolio has performed very well. We bought and built great sites, installed good equipment, and dealt with any issues when they’ve come up.

Sustainability has always been a core component of our operations. We've fed into studies led by the trade body, Solar Energy UK, and let them use our sites for habitat surveys. We're also about to start a project looking at threatened species on solar farms, which isn't something other developers have done yet. We're also doing habitat recovery and biodiversity net gain work across multiple plants.

Q: What does a day in the life of a Foresight Solar portfolio director look like?

JE: I take a holistic view of how Foresight Solar is doing and I have the pleasure of working with different teams across the business.

Alongside reporting on the assets, a lot of my work is the day-to-day management that comes with running a portfolio of this scale, keeping on top of whatever each site needs at any given time – whether that's a transformer replacement, an issue with a landlord, a network outage, or another site issue that crops up.

In addition to that, there are the longer-term initiatives to stay ahead of issues, like how we manage our spare parts strategy, executing the enhancements and the repowering work, and overseeing the lease negotiations to extend the lives of assets.

Q: What excites you about Foresight Solar?

JE: Most of all, it’s the scale of our operations. We own 723 MW across 50 UK assets. When I joined in 2013, the largest site in the portfolio was 34 MW. A few years later, we bought a 72 MW site, which was the biggest in the country at the time.

That scalability has always been part of what makes solar interesting to me – from installing kilowatt-scale, off-grid systems early in my career to the huge projects of many hundred megawatts being developed and built today. 

Q: What has been your most marking memory with the fund?

JE: The early acquisition phase stands out. It was hard work: a small team buying and building the plants. Foresight Group was smaller then, and there was a real start-up spirit. Fortunately, we’ve kept that energy as the company continued to grow. 

Q: Where do you see Foresight Solar in the next few years?

JE: The divestment initiatives that the investment team are leading on are the interesting part for me.

The idea is that we raise money through those divestments and reinvest it in a pipeline of higher-yielding opportunities, so we can put everything we've learned over the last 13 years to use again.

Ideally, we get to build assets out, working with engineering, procurement and construction companies and module manufacturers, which was a lot of fun the first time around. It’s an exciting direction of travel.