The project was selected in a tender for storage deployment in non mainland grid interconnected areas that was finalized by France’s Energy Regulatory Commission in 2016.

A thinktank has studied whether increased solar energy would contribute significantly to reducing the carbon footprint of the French and European electricity systems in an attempt to respond to a common French refrain the nation needs no further decarbonization of energy because it has nuclear power.

French agricultural PV specialist Sun’Agri has revealed the results of tests run on a solar plant integrated with viticulture. During heat waves, the company said, vines shaded by solar panels continued to grow and needed less water.

French energy giant Total and German start-up Next2Sun have joined forces to develop vertical PV solutions in the French market. The oil group’s unit Total Quadran plans to use the solution in agrivoltaic projects.

The governments of both countries are answering solar industry requests by adjusting tender schemes and considering measures to avoid financial penalties and the loss of incentives due to missed deadlines.

Franc Raffalli, president of the Photovoltaic Professions Group of the French Building Federation spoke to pv magazine about the impact of the coronavirus on the French PV industry.

The ‘best conversion performance in the world in a dark room’ is how the developers of a new organic PV device have described it. Such cells could be used as a wireless source of energy for internet of things applications or in gadgets such as temperature-humidity and motion sensors.

A footnote in France’s energy legislation had been holding back the development of collective self-consumption in the country, limiting such projects to ‘experimental’ status with terms of no more than five years. The removal of this footnote at the beginning of March means that energy communities for self-consumption are now permitted across the country.

According to SolarPower Europe, local agriculture and solar energy could become the engines of a sustainable European economy. The trade body has created a task force, led by French independent power producer Amarenco, that aims to place agrivoltaics at the top of the European agricultural policy agenda, while also establishing global standards for the segment.

Total is building a 25 MW/25 MWh lithium-ion storage system in Mardyck, northern France. The oil giant plans to commission the facility by the end of the year.