Sicily is now home to Italy’s largest solar farm
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- Iberdrola's Fénix solar farm — a 243 MW facility sited between Centuripe, Paternò, and Belpasso in Sicily — is now online, overtaking the previous Italian record-holder, a 170 MW facility in Viterbo, Lazio.
- Fénix is built from more than 413,000 bifacial solar panels and connects to the grid through 26 km of medium-voltage lines plus 9 km of high-voltage transmission lines; more than 500 people worked on the project during peak construction.
- The project is projected to generate nearly 400,000 MWh of electricity annually — enough to power the equivalent of more than 140,000 homes.
- Most of the farm's output has already been committed via long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Italian businesses, locking in price stability for buyers and financial certainty for the developer.
- The European Investment Bank (EIB) financed the project, underscoring EU-level backing for Italy's utility-scale solar buildout.
- Italy now has more than 40 GW of installed solar capacity and is targeting roughly 80 GW by 2030 under its national energy and climate plan, though permitting delays and grid-connection bottlenecks remain obstacles — bottlenecks most acute in the south, where Fénix sits.
Why it matters: Southern Italy, and Sicily in particular, is emerging as a hub for utility-scale solar thanks to its abundant sunshine and available land. Iberdrola's ability to lock in long-term corporate PPAs and secure EIB financing shows the deployment model is working — but Italy's permitting and grid-connection bottlenecks will determine whether capacity can actually scale from 40 GW toward the 80 GW target by 2030.
