Kyocera Corporation has announced that it has supplied 8,500 solar modules for the largest solar power plant in north-western France. The 2MW solar power plant sits on four acres of unused farmland and was officially inaugurated on October 21 in Distré, in the French department of Maine-et-Loire.
Realized with an investment by French distributer Quénéa Energies Renouvelables and the state-run financial institution Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, the benefits of the solar installation will be two-fold. Not only will CO2 emissions be off-set by 700 tons per year, the installation will be part of a sustainable solution for the reclamation of unused land to make a positive contribution to the environment via clean energy generation.
The Kyocera solar modules produce an average total power output of 2,200,000kW/hour per year which is equal to the average annual energy consumption of 900 local households.
Kyocera, ranked seventh out of ten of the top PV cell manufacturers of 2010 by market research firm Solarbuzz, has shipped modules for large-scale power plants around the world. This includes university carports in the US to solar powered bus shelters in Japan. The company has also agreed to supply modules for a 204MW project in Thailand and is currently supplying 13MW to a solar power plant in eastern Japan which is scheduled to begin operation this December.
