Consolidated Edison Development Acquires GCL Solar Projects

Consolidated Edison Development (CED), and GCL Solar Energy announced the completion of CED's acquisition of two solar photovoltaic projects totaling 92 megawatts MD DC (70 megawatts AC) from GCL Solar. The projects, situated in Alpaugh in Tulare County in California's Central Valley, are scheduled to begin commercial operation in the fourth quarter of 2012. The two projects will be owned and operated by CED and provide enough power to serve about 15,000 homes. Each year the solar generation is expected to avoid nearly 80,000 tons of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of removing nearly 15,000 cars from the road every year for the life of the projects. The power and environmental attributes are being sold to Pacific Gas and Electric Company under 25-year power purchase agreements.

"Con Edison Development has successfully constructed and maintains long-term ownership of 11 renewable facilities in the Northeast," said Mark Noyes, vice president of Con Edison Development.

"Now, with the acquisition of these two projects in California," he said, "we have taken a major step forward in broadening our geographic horizons. CED looks forward to the opportunity to deliver clean and reliable energy to businesses and households in California, a state widely praised for its pioneering achievements in the renewable energy sector."

Mr. Peter Xie, CEO of GCL Solar, said, "We are proud to close a solar farm transaction of such scale, the largest ground-mounted solar project GCL Poly has ever developed. The successful completion of the two projects totaling 92 MW DC demonstrates our ability to provide development, construction and financing of large-scale solar farms. This also solidifies our position to further expand from our 1gigawatt (GW) solar farm pipeline we have in the USA. We continue to execute our dual core strategy where we produce high quality polysilicon and wafer in the upstream and develop solar farm projects and provide system integration services in the downstream."