BNRG Renewables, an Irish-based solar energy group, has raised €918,000 to re-finance two solar farms in Kent powering 82homes using the power of online crowdfunding.

The two 249kW sites in the UK, known as BNRG Gorse, have over 540 investors each expecting inflation linked returns of 7.35pc with BNRG funding the projects initially off balance sheet and now re-financed by way of crowdfunding using the site Abundance.

While BNRG have previously funded one of their solar developments through Abundance, BNRG Gorse is their first project in which Irish resident investors (as well as those throughout the European Economic Area) could invest as well.

The company have heralded the growing success of crowdfunding as a legitimate model of raising funding for a business by allowing them to source funds cheaply from a larger group of people, some of whom may have only very modest sums to invest.

The minimum investment for the project was just €6.29 which can be held for as long as 20 years and BNRG’s founder, David Maguire, believes they will continue to use it for some of their future projects: ““While our core business is in larger utility scale projects of which we have developed and constructed over €150m worth of assets, we have developed a number of commercial scale projects and crowdfunding is a great solution for these smaller renewable projects. It feels fantastic to be playing a wider part in a sustainable economy, not only offering clean power but good investments directly to the public.