An inauguration ceremony will be held to celebrate the system's commencement of service on Tuesday, September 18, 2007, at the facility grounds about 12 miles northwest of downtown Salamanca. Guests will include regional ministers and representatives of both Kyocera and Madrid-based Avanzalia Solar, the project leader and initiator.

Planta Solar de Salamanca is distinguished from most other solar electric power plants not only by scale, but also by basic design. Solar PV systems have traditionally been deployed for "distributed" power generation, in which individual homeowners or business owners install their own systems on their own rooftops or immediate grounds.

In contrast, Planta Solar de Salamanca was designed as a "central" generating facility to serve a large number of remote users, following the model of more traditional commercial power plants. This design is made economically feasible by a "feed-in" tariff recently adopted in Spain and other European nations, in which electric power companies purchase electricity from system owners at above-market rates.

Kyocera expects strong global demand for solar energy products, and recently secured silicon supply agreements to permit a significant expansion in its business. The company operates solar module manufacturing centers in Japan, China, the Czech Republic and Mexico, and plans to have capacity to produce 500 megawatts of PV modules per year by March 2011.

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