Kyocera has announced that is has supplied 8,500 solar modules for a new 2-megawatt (MW) solar power plant which sits over four acres of unused farmland in north-western France. The plant was officially inaugurated on October 21 in Distre, in the French department of Maine-et-Loire.

The large-scale installation is a flagship project in terms of sustainability, and the Kyocera solar modules produce an average total power output of 2,200,000-kW/hours per year of environmentally-friendly electricity - equal to the average annual energy consumption of 900 local households. Furthermore, the clean-energy power plant will off-set roughly 700-tons of CO2 per year.

The solar installation is the largest solar power plant in north-western France, and is a pioneer project for future model systems. The renewable energy plant was established as a sustainable solution for the reclamation of unused land, as the space can now be used to make a positive contribution to the environment via clean energy generation.

The project was realized with an investment by the French company Quenea Energies Renouvelables - a medium-sized enterprise specializing in the field of renewable energy - and the state-run financial institution Caisse des Depots et Consignations.

Kyocera has notably shipped modules for large-scale power plants around the world, including more than 50MW for three projects in Spain. 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.

Furthermore, data collected from three of these plants in Spain (Dulcinea: 28.8MW; Salamanca: 13.8MW) and Thailand (Korat: 6MW) show that the company's modules are exceeding the installers' own original power output estimates - demonstrating the high performance and reliability of Kyocera's products.