Rome, January 20th, 2011 ESSE (Enel Green Power & Sharp Solar Energy), the new joint venture between Sharp and Enel Green Power, has just completed its first ground-mounted photovoltaic plant at Serragiumenta, in the province of Cosenza, Calabria.
The new photovoltaic array has an installed capacity of 5 MW and is made with Sharp modules. When fully operational it will be able to generate about 7.5 million kilowatt hours per year equal to the consumption of about 2,800 households thus avoiding the emission of 5,800 tons of CO2 and saving about 634 tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) in fossil fuels.
ESSE intends to develop photovoltaic systems with over 500 MW in capacity throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region using thin-film panels manufactured at the factory jointly owned, on an equal share basis, by Enel Green Power, Sharp and STMicroelectronics now under construction in Catania.
The facility will have an initial annual production capacity of photovoltaic panels with a total capacity of 160 MW, to be increased to 480 MW in the next few years, immediately making it the largest photovoltaic panel manufacturing plant in Italy and one of the largest in Europe.