Italy's largest PV project comes online

• A 103 MW solar park built by Danish programmer European Energy has actually been linked to the grid after a year of building job. The project had actually been started in 2011 and also at one stage appeared doomed, when a nationwide feed-in tariff program ended.

Danish PV project programmer European Energy has introduced the conclusion of a 103 MW solar plant in Troia, in the southern Italian region of Apulia. "More than 400 individuals were involved in the building and others will run as well as keep the activity during the 30-year lifecycle of the plant," said European Energy president Knud Erik Andersen.

The plant includes 275,000 "most recent generation" solar modules from an unrevealed producer. Building and construction took about a year, the company said, without revealing more technical or economic project details.

The plant was under a legal requirement to be completed this month after the Regional Administrative Court of Apulia responded to a petition by the developer to renew authorization for the project, conceding 17 months to get it linked to the grid.

The project is anticipated to sell power via a bilateral power acquisition contract. European Energy in January last year revealed it had actually protected a 12-year agreement from the Axpo Italia local unit of the Swiss electrical utility for Axpo to acquire 300 MW of solar power. "The size and the price of the arrangement makes certain bankability, which will certainly allow us to realize significant parts of our Italian project pipeline," stated CEO Andersen at the time, adding most of the projects worried were in Apulia as well as Sicily.

European Energy in February last year got the ASI Troia FV1, unique function company which owns the Troia project. The plant had actually been accepted by Apulia's local government in 2011, when the Conto Energia feed-in toll program was still running. When that incentive scheme shut, the project showed up doomed. Nonetheless, with unsubsidized, grid-parity solar becoming viable in Italy in the last 2 years, interest in big scale projects has actually revitalized.