China Sunergy achieves major milestone of international development

NANJING, CHINA: China Sunergy Co. Ltd announced that it has completed the sale of a solar farm project to Lightsource Renewable Energy Ltd, which is a UK's leading solar energy generator.

The Project, located in the southwest of Cornwall in the United Kingdom (UK) was connected to the grid at the end of March of this year and now generates enough local green electricity to power over 1500 households.

The Project was completed on land that has traditionally been farmed with a rotation of cattle and crops. Whilst the area used for energy generation covers only 10 percen of the farm area, income from the Project will provide the farm owners with funds to make other areas of the farm more productive, including improved machinery, fencing and hedgerows. The agricultural output from the whole farm will remain similar to the pre-development scenario.

At the end of 2012, China Sunergy announced that it had started to invest in two UK solar farms, with an installed capacity of 5 megawatts-peak (MWp) each. Both solar farms were completed within just three months installed with the company's own high efficiency polycrystalline modules. The large scale application of solar panels (solar farms) is quick and does not harm the ground where it is installed on.

The sale of this first UK project marks a major milestone for the company in relation to its downstream business, and also strengthens its confidence in investing and developing a project pipeline in other markets. As to the other 5MW project, the company currently expects to have it accomplished in 2014.

Nick Boyle, CEO of Lightsource, commented: "We are delighted to have completed this deal with China Sunergy and believe that this project, like our many others, will once again boost the rural economy in this area as well as allow further biodiversity. We applaud China Sunergy for their hard efforts and look forward to more deals with them in the future."

"The sale of this Project highlights China Sunergy's pioneering spirit, as we are the first Chinese developer to fully complete a downstream project lifecycle, having invested, developed, constructed, operated and now sold a ground-based solar PV project in the UK," Stephen Cai, CEO of China Sunergy, commented.

"The accomplishment underlines our forward-thinking strategy, as well as our customer's confidence in our reliable quality, deep expertise, and execution capabilities. We will work harder to bring out more high quality projects in the future."