Etrion Completes Ruffano Solar Park in Italy
December 22, 2010, Geneva, Switzerland – Etrion Corporation (“Etrion” or the “Company”) (TSX: ETX) (OMX: ETX), an independent solar power producer, announces the completion of the Ruffano solar park in Puglia, Italy.
Marco Northland, Etrion’s CEO, commented, “We are pleased to announce the completion of another solar park in Italy. We continue to execute on our projects under construction and expect to exit the year with almost 50 MW operational.”
The Ruffano park has a total capacity of 1 MW and is expected to produce over 1.7 million kilowatt hours (“kWh”) of clean electricity and more than 600,000 euros of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (“EBITDA”) per year.
The project benefits from the 2010 feed-in-tariff of 0.346 euros per kWh plus a market price of approximately 0.08 euros per kWh.
The Italian feed-in-tariff is a premium purchase price for solar electricity that is guaranteed by the Italian government for 20 years from the start of operations.
The 1 MW Ruffano park is a ground-based solar PV power plant using SunPower’s high-efficiency PV modules and single axis tracker technology with Siemens inverters.
Centrobanca, an Italian bank, provided 83% of the financing for the project with a 17.5-year, non-recourse loan.
About Etrion
Etrion Corporation develops, builds, owns and operates solar power plants in Italy. Etrion currently owns 42 megawatts (MW) of operational, ground-based solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants, has 16 MW of solar parks under construction and approximately 200 MW of solar development pipeline in Italy. Etrion is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm exchange (ticker symbol “ETX”).
For additional information, please visit the Company’s website at www.etrion.com or contact:
Robert Eriksson – Investor Relations
Telephone: +46 (0)701 112615