SunEdison successfully interconnected a 70 megawatt (MW) PV power plant in Northeast Italy, near the town of Rovigo, which is now the largest capacity single-operating PV solar power plant in Europe, with interconnection completed in just nine-months.
The Rovigo solar plant will create significant environmental benefits over its lifetime. In its first year of operation alone, the system is expected to generate enough energy to power more than 16,500 homes and prevent the emission of more than 40,000 tons of CO2, equivalent to the removal of 8,000 cars from the road.
"The impressive scale of this milestone European PV project is a direct testament to the high quality work by SunEdison and its partners, including Canadian Solar. We are proud that Canadian Solar's modules were selected to be a part of this major project due to our proven track record of high quality and reliability," said Shawn Qu, chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar. "Canadian Solar has already deployed over 1 GW of modules around the world in the last eight years. We look forward to continuing to work with our customers, such as SunEdison, to promote the expansion of solar energy worldwide."
The Rovigo solar power plant was acquired by First Reserve through a previously announced joint venture between First Reserve Corporation and SunEdison. Investment programs managed or advised by Partners Group AG and Perennius Capital Partners SGR have invested in the project with the First Reserve joint venture. First Reserve recently announced the execution of a 276 million project finance facility for the project with some of the leading European banks, including Banco Santander, Unicredit Corporate Banking, Dexia Crediop, Natixis, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole.
