The company OPDE ITALIA has started the construction of six new photovoltaic solar farms in the region of Piedmont that will reach a total power of 26 MW.

The new farms are located in the cities of Tortona, Alessandria, Pedrosa (in the region of Alessandria) and Fosano (in the region of Cuneo). In its construction and start up an investment of more than 120 million Euros will be carried out, with the creation of a hundred direct and indirect jobs. The power of the 6 solar plants is distributed of the following way:

In the construction of the six farms more than 91,000 Trina module units of 230 Wp, 2,027 inverter units SMA model 11000 TL and 2,027 1-axis MECASOLAR trackers model MS-1E PLUS will be used, these have already begun to be assembled in the factory the company has in Turin, among others elements. The new solar farms will be finalized March 31 this year. The speed of the work has been possible thanks to the work of the site management and engineering team which OPDE has in Italy.

OPDE Italy inform us that there are already several investment funds which have shown interest in acquiring the new projects, as well as part of the 17 MW that the company connected in Italy in 2010. By the time the work on these 26 MW has finalized, OPDE ITALY will have accumulated a total 43 MW constructed in Italy along with more than 127 MW that OPDE will have constructed worldwide.

The 26 MW that are already under construction form part of the orders on their books of more than 58 MW with the sole authorization the company has in diverse zones of the region of Piedmont (Alexandria, Cuneo and Turin), ready to begin construction in the first semester of 2011. OPDE ITALIA is working on the organization of the construction phase of the rest of MWs which have already been legalized with "Autorizacione Unica" for the second quarter of this year.

This would add to a total of 80.4 MW of constructed accumulated power in Italy at the end of 2011 and an investment, during the present year, of more than 316 million Euros in solar farms, creating a total of 375 direct and indirect jobs, especially in the region of Piedmont.


PRESENCE OF THE GROUP OPDE IN ITALY

OPDE ITALIA forms alongside MECASOLAR ITALIA and PROINSO ITALIA, the Italian branches of the Spanish Grupo OPDE. In the case of MECASOLAR ITALIA, specialized in the manufacture of solar trackers and fixed structures, the company has an assembly factory in Turin-ITALY (as well as the ones they already have in Greece, the USA, Canada and Spain), facilities in which OPDE ITALY is also located.

Besides the trackers for the solar farms promoted by OPDE, MECASOLAR has a portfolio of external orders of 42 MW confirmed in the Italian market, forecasting that their sales will surpass the 100 MW mark in Italy in 2011. From this factory located in Turin the maintenance will be conducted for all the trackers that MECASOLAR supplies in Italy and which are expected to surpasses 100 MW at the end of 2011.

PROINSO ITALIA accounted in 2010 for 50% of the total sales of PROINSO on an international level. It distributed 456 MW modules and inverters worldwide, obtaining 165 million Euros last year, in Italy alone, of the more than 320 million Euros that the international branches of PROINSO as part of the GRUPO OPDE sold to the world-wide market. In Italy PROINSO has more than 500 Qualified Installers in its International Network which exceeds 1,300 companies at international level.

All the activities and projects mentioned above mean that the OPDE Group will expect to have built by the end of the period 2011-2012 solar photovoltaic plants with a total capacity of 200 MW, this amount being the total forecast to be installed by the end of 2012. Therefore ending 2012 with an accumulated total investment of 850 million Euros.