Sicily is now home to Italy’s largest solar farm
SkimNews Take
Spain's Iberdrola now operates Italy's largest solar farm, marking a shift where a foreign utility rather than a domestic player holds the country's flagship utility-scale renewable asset.
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- Iberdrola switched on its 243 MW Fénix solar farm in Sicily — enough to power the equivalent of 140,000+ homes with ~400,000 MWh of annual output.
- Fénix overtakes Italy's previous largest solar farm, a 170 MW facility in Viterbo in the Lazio region.
- The project uses 413,000+ bifacial solar panels and connects to the grid through 26 km of medium-voltage and 9 km of high-voltage transmission lines, with 500+ workers on-site at peak construction.
- Most of Fénix's output is already locked in through long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Italian businesses, and the project was financed by the European Investment Bank.
- Italy now has more than 40 GW of installed solar capacity and is targeting roughly 80 GW by 2030 as part of its national energy and climate plan, though permitting delays and grid bottlenecks remain obstacles.
Why it matters: Most of Fénix's output is already pre-sold via long-term PPAs, showing bankable offtake structures are the unlock for utility-scale solar in southern Italy. With Italy targeting 80 GW of installed solar by 2030 — double today's 40 GW — Sicily is positioning as the engine of that build-out despite permitting and grid bottlenecks.
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