Independent power producer (IPP) Nadara has started commercial operations at the Big Fish agrivoltaics (agriPV) project in Italy, the largest agriPV project in the country.
Located near Catania in Sicily, the Big Fish project has a capacity of 227MW and is the largest operational project in Nadara’s portfolio, which covers both Europe and the US. The company has also signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with tech giant Amazon for 156MW of the project’s capacity, and said that the project was “made possible” by the deal.
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Amazon has already announced plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, and has invested in a number of renewable energy projects to this end, including signing offtake agreements involving solar-plus-storage projects and acquiring solar projects outright.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has already described the current period as a “new era” for the energy sector, with tech giants driving a significant increase in demand for electricity, but a report from Greenpeace Australia found that the construction of new data centres, in particular, could ultimately be harmful for the energy transition if their energy needs are not met by new renewable energy projects.
For Nadara, the successful start of operations at Big Fish follows a €1.2 billion (US$1.36 billion) refinancing completed earlier this year. The company’s chief growth officer Jorge Martinez also said that agriPV, as a process, is “still maturing,” and expressed enthusiasm at the start of operations at the project.
“Agrivoltaic development is still maturing as a large-scale practice, and there is something genuinely exciting about a site where the land continues to feed people while also powering homes,” said Martinez. “It asks us to think carefully about how we use space, how we work with farmers and local communities and how we design projects that leave something lasting behind.”
The start of commercial operations at the project is also a positive sign for Italy’s agriPV sector in particular. The government banned the practice in 2024, although projects already under development were protected from the new rules and the following year, an Italian court partially repealed the ban, opening up the potential for more agriPV deployment in the country. In May, Danish IPP European Energy began construction work at a 225.5MW agriPV project, also in Sicily, which the developer described at the time as the “largest” such project in the country.
