“The launch of this tender is the sign of the commitment of the government [to] the conversion of the territory of Fessenheim, with the communities. It will develop local electricity production from renewable energies and launch the photovoltaic industry in Haut-Rhin.”
That announcement, relating to a tender for deployment of 300 MW of solar at the soon to-be-decommissioned nuclear power plant of Fessenheim approved by the European Commission, was made by France’s minister for the ecological and inclusive transition, François de Rugy.
De Rugy said the tender, which was published on the website of the country's energy regulator CRE, will assign 200 MW of ground-mounted large-scale PV projects, 75 MW of large rooftop solar and 25 MW of small rooftops. “An environmental bonus will be awarded to ground-based power plants that will be established on degraded land,” he added.
The procurement will be held in three rounds. “The tender represents a commitment by the government of €250 million for the benefit of the territory over a period of 20 years,” a statement from the French government said.
No limits?
In July, France’s Directorate General for Energy and Climate – part of the ecological ministry – released details of the bidding terms by revealing ground-mounted projects may have a capacity of 500 kW-30 MW, and large-scale rooftop projects should be larger than 8 MW.
The 30 MW limit for ground-mounted projects is due to regulation that does not permit larger plants on degraded land. At a recent conference in Dunkirk, however, De Rugy announced the limit may be raised.
“This is good news as we consider that utility scale projects can benefit, to the decrease of PV electricity price,” Xavier Daval, VP of French renewable energy association SER and CEO of KiloWattsol SAS told pv magazine. “We can only approve the removal of another limitation applied to renewable energies. As [a] solar association, we are ready to take part [in] the necessary discussion on the possibility of having no limit or a further limit. We also need to understand how this new segment will exist within ongoing tenders, as the change of scale could introduce a competition bias and absorb all the capacity within a few projects.”
* the article was updated on Jan. 24, 13:52 to add the official link of the tender, which was published on the CRE's website.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.