France assigns 129.4 MW in commercial and industrial PV tender

France’s Ministry for an Ecological and Solidarity Transition has announced the winners in the eighth phase of a tender for commercial and industrial rooftop systems with generation capacities ranging from 100 kW to 8 MW.

The ministry selected 268 projects with a total installed capacity of 129.4 MW in the procurement exercise. “These projects will value the electricity produced at an average price of €97.48/MWh for those whose power [generation capacity] is between 100 kW and 500 kW, and €86.54/MWh for those whose power is between 500 kW and 8 MW,” said minister Élisabeth Borne in a statement.

In the previous tender of the series, finalized in June, the final average price for 100-500 kW systems was €93/MWh with €99 set for larger arrays. In that exercise, 282 projects were selected with a cumulative capacity of just over 157 MW – 71 MW of smaller systems and 86 MW of larger.

The final average prices of both tenders, however, were higher than those registered in previous procurement rounds. In a tender in September 2018, for example, the final average price of all selected projects was €76.80/MWh, a decrease of 5% on the €80.80 recorded in the round held five months earlier. Then-minister François De Rugy said at the time, the largest rooftop projects assigned in that exercise had recorded a historically low price of €72.20/MWh.

According to the list of winners published today, most of the projects have an installed capacity of less than 300 kW. In the section for larger systems, only six projects had a capacity greater than 2 MW with the largest a 5 MW installation.