Etrion Corporation (“Etrion” or the “Company”) (TSX: ETX) (OMX: ETX), an independent solar power producer, announces the completion of the Helios ITA-3 solar project in Puglia, Italy.
The Helios ITA-3 solar project has a total capacity of 10 megawatts (“MW”) and is expected to produce 16.8 million kilowatt hours (“kWh”) of clean electricity and 5.0 million euros of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (“EBITDA”) per year.
The project is expected to benefit from the feed-in-tariff (“FiT”) of 0.25 euros per kWh plus a market price of approximately 0.08 euros per kWh.
The Italian FiT is a premium purchase price for solar electricity that is guaranteed by the Italian government for 20 years from the start of operations.
The Helios ITA-3 project includes two 5 MW ground-mounted solar photovoltaic (“PV”) parks, Brindisi and Mesagne. Both parks were built by ABB using Yingli poly-crystalline PV modules mounted on SunPower single axis trackers with Bonfiglioli inverters.
A syndicate of banks, including Natixis, WestLB and Mediocreval, provided 80% of the financing for the project with an 18-year, non-recourse loan.
Marco Northland, the Company’s CEO, commented, “We completed the Helios ITA-3 parks ahead of schedule and under budget thanks to the hard work of our superb local team, our contractors and the local utility, Enel. Etrion now has a fully-funded, operational solar portfolio of 60 MW in Italy with significant cash flow. We continue to review opportunities for growth in Italy and abroad.”
