From pv magazine France
Commission de régulation de l'énergie (CRE), the French energy regulator, has published the results of the third tender round for ground-mounted and commercial and industrial rooftop installations.
This last round of the French renewable energy tenders was undersubscribed, with a significant increase in final prices. Finergreen, a French consulting firm specializing in renewable energy, analyzed the latest results and compared them with those of the previous tender rounds.
“It would appear that many bidders failed to comply with the financial security requirement in the latest version of the tender specifications due to misinterpretation, which made their bid null,” Finergreen said in a recent report on the procurement exercises. “This situation echoes the results of the latest tenders for onshore wind and ground-mounted photovoltaics – both published in the last two weeks – where many developers met the same fate with their applications.”
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The CRE allocated just 58 MW of the 400 MW originally planned in the undersubscribed C&I rooftop PV tender. It selected 16 projects at an average final price of €104/MWh, up 15% from the September 2022 tender. The regulator selected just seven projects in the ground-mounted solar power plants, for a total capacity of 115 MW, against initial expectations for 925 MW. The final average price was €82.20/MWh, up 20% compared from the August 2022 tender. The selected developers included Q Energy, Neoen, and Kronos Solar.
The French government has announced plans that hold a 1.5 GW tender for ground-mounted PV and another tender for 800 MW of rooftop capacity, in order to compensate for the high failure rate of the latest tenders.
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The French authorities continue to select high-quality, affordable rooftop solar PV installations. The average price of €104/MWh was up 15% from the September 2022 tender, and the seven ground-mounted projects selected at an average price of €82.2/MWh was up 20%. This is great news for consumers and the environment, and shows that the French solar market is continuing to grow rapidly.