First Ronald McDonald House in California Goes Solar

Home-Away-From-Home for Families in San Diego with Hospitalized Children Celebrates One-Year Anniversary with Solar Electric System

News provided by

Canadian Solar Inc.

Jun 30, 2010, 07:00 ET

ONTARIO, Canada and SAN DIEGO, Calif., June 30 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- Ronald McDonald House Charities of San Diego, Canadian Solar Inc. ("the Company," "Canadian Solar" or "we") (Nasdaq: CSIQ), one of the world's largest solar companies, and HelioPower, a leading solar power engineering and installation firm, announced today a new 116kW roof- mount photovoltaic (PV) solar electric system at the Ronald McDonald House of San Diego at 2929 Children's Way in San Diego. This is the first Ronald McDonald House in California to use solar energy to help power the House that supports families with seriously ill children in local hospitals.

Ronald McDonald House of San Diego will serve more than 20,000 families this year alone, and the solar electric installation will help offset the electrical needs of the families with clean energy. This month, the House celebrates the one-year anniversary of its 47-bedroom House for overnight guests and its Family Care Center, which serves as a day-time refuge for anyone with a child in a San Diego hospital.

"The Ronald McDonald House ensures families in San Diego receive the necessities they need as they care for their sick child, and we are so pleased to be able to provide our high-quality modules to this pivotal community facility," said Mike Miskovsky, U.S. general manager of Canadian Solar, Inc. "Through its leadership in California implementing a renewable energy solution, the Ronald McDonald House of San Diego will reap significant financial savings while contributing to environmental sustainability for years to come."

The Ronald McDonald House of San Diego solar electric system will produce an average of 147,846 kilowatt hours (kW/h) per year. The environmental offset is equivalent to curtailing the release of 151,420 pounds of carbon dioxide each year, or planting 554 new trees and sequestering the carbon dioxide over their lifetime.

The solar installation was designed and constructed by HelioPower and financed by Helio Micro Utility, and consists of 518 Canadian Solar CS6P-220P polycrystalline modules. These modules are among the top-ranked in the industry in PV USA (PTC) ratings, which are quickly becoming universally accepted standards for measuring real-world module energy production and performance. PV Powered, Inc., an Advanced Energy company, supplied the 100kW inverter. Canadian Solar, HelioPower and PV Powered all donated price reductions to benefit the charity.

"Ronald McDonald House decided to pursue solar energy to create a healthy and sustainable environment for the children and families we serve, and to help greatly offset power costs," said Bill Lennartz, president and CEO of Ronald McDonald House of San Diego. "Our partners have been vital to our success as a resource to families in some of the most challenging times of their lives, and we are excited to now be producing clean solar energy to help us provide care to even more families."

The solar installation is part of the Ronald McDonald House of San Diego's pursuit of U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. The House was built according to strict green building standards, using a combination of high-efficiency mechanical systems and envelope and lighting design; it uses 17.5 percent less energy than a typical building in California. Materials used to create the building contain significant amounts of recycled content, and the building provides recycling collection stations to all house guests and employees.

"This is the first Ronald MacDonald House in California to go solar," said Steve LoRusso, vice president of commercial sales at HelioPower. "Working with our affiliate company, Helio Micro Utility, we developed the critical solar financing structure that worked for them as a nonprofit entity and supported their green building goals."

"Ronald McDonald House of San Diego makes life easier and more comfortable for many families in need. We are honored to be a part of helping so many people by providing our inverter, with its field-proven reliability and uptime, to this important solar installation" said Erick Petersen, VP of Sales and Marketing at PV Powered.

About Ronald McDonald House Of San Diego:

For 30 years, San Diego's RMHC has provided more than 140,000 nights of lodging for more than 14,000 families whose children face life-threatening illnesses and are receiving treatment at area hospitals. With the opening of the new House located atop a six-story parking garage across from Rady Children's Hospital, the new 47- bedroom Ronald McDonald House quadruples the size of the old 12-bedroom House. It features a new Family Care Center that is open daily to anyone with a child in an area hospital and will serve the needs of 20,000 families each year. The Center offers dining services, a computer lab, arts and crafts room, children's play room, teen center, play yard, faith room, outdoor play areas, laundry, day resting rooms and shower facilities.

RMHC is a 501(C) (3) non-profit that receives 10 percent of its funding from local McDonald's Restaurant owners and operators. The remaining 90 percent needed to operate the house and serve families must be raised through donations from individuals and fundraisers. For more information visit http://www.rmhcsd.org or call (858) 467-4750.

About Canadian Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: CSIQ)

Canadian Solar Inc. is one of the world's largest solar companies. As a leading vertically integrated provider of ingot, wafer, solar cell, solar module and other solar applications, Canadian Solar designs, manufactures and delivers solar products and solar system solutions for on-grid and off-grid use to customers worldwide. With operations in North America, Europe and Asia, Canadian Solar provides premium quality, cost-effective and environmentally- friendly solar solutions to support global, sustainable development. For more information, visit http://www.canadiansolar.com .

U.S. offices: 12657 Alcosta Blvd, Suite 140, San Ramon, CA 94583 Telephone: 1-925-866-2700 Fax: 1-925-866-2704

About HelioPower

HelioPower has engineered over 1000 solar power solutions for residential, commercial, community and utility scale partners since 2001 in the Western states and serves clients worldwide. Customer testimonials are available at http://www.HelioPower.com . HelioPower can also be reached toll free at 1.87.SOLAR.888/1.877.652.7888.

About PV Powered

PV Powered is an innovation leader for grid-tied PV inverters in the residential, commercial and utility markets, setting new industry standards for innovation in reliability and efficiency. Recently acquired by Advanced Energy Industries (Nasdaq: AEIS), the company has pioneered the use of advanced reliability engineering to design inverters with a 20+ year operating life. PV Powered received a Stage 2 award under the Solar Energy Grid Integration System (SEGIS) program by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), using it to lead a team of recognized distributed energy and smart grid partners in developing innovations that increase energy harvest, reduce the cost of PV systems, and remove barriers to high levels of PV grid penetration. For more information on the company, visit http://www.pvpowered.com .

Safe Harbor/Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release including statements are forward- looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These statements are made under the "Safe Harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by such terms as "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "estimates," the negative of these terms, or other comparable terminology. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include general business and economic conditions and the state of the solar industry; governmental support for the deployment of solar power; future available supplies of high-purity silicon; demand for end-use products by consumers and inventory levels of such products in the supply chain; changes in demand from significant customers, including customers of our silicon materials sales; changes in demand from major markets such as Germany and Canada; risks associated with building our new Ontario facility; changes in customer order patterns; changes in product mix; capacity utilization; level of competition; pricing pressure and declines in average selling prices; delays in new product introduction; continued success in technological innovations and delivery of products with the features customers demand; shortage in supply of materials or capacity requirements; availability of financing; exchange rate fluctuations; litigation and other risks as described in the Company's SEC filings, including its annual report on Form 20-F originally filed on June 8, 2009, as amended by its report on Form 20-F/A filed on October 14, 2009. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, level of activity, performance, or achievements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. All information provided in this press release is as of today's date, unless otherwise stated, and Canadian Solar undertakes no duty to update such information, except as required under applicable law.

SOURCE Canadian Solar Inc.