France

Xavier Daval, the president of Syndicat des énergies renouvelables (SER), the French renewables association – spoke with pv magazine at Intersolar 2023 about solar and nuclear power in France, as well as the prospects for PV prices and installations. He touched on the market for power purchase agreements (PPA) and the outlook for solar manufacturing in France, where PV installations could hit 3 GW this year.

EDF’s new 20 MW floating solar project is built close to an EDF hydropower dam near Lazer, in southern France.

France reached 17.15 GW of cumulative installed PV capacity at the end of March.

Butagaz is expanding into the French solar market in cooperation with its subsidiaries, Soltea, Solwea, and Sys Enr.

CRE, the French energy regulator, originally planned to allocate 83 MW in its latest procurement exercise.

The French authorities selected 16 projects (58 MW) in the third round of rooftop PV tenders, at an average final price of €104 ($114.30)/MWh, up 15% from the September 2022 tender. The authorities selected seven ground-mounted projects, or 115 MW of capacity, at an average price of €82.2/MWh, up 20% from the last tender.

The French government has announced the launch of a tender for 1.5 GW of ground-mounted PV and another tender for 800 MW of rooftop capacity, in order to compensate for the high failure rate of the third round of tenders for large-scale PV plants.

Several lawyers recently spoke to pv magazine France spoke about changes to the French legal framework for renewable-energy power purchase agreements (PPAs).

France’s Systovi is ramping up the annual capacity of its module factory in Carquefou, France. pv magazine France spoke to the company’s general director, Paul Toulouse, about European manufacturing and competition from Asia.

France’s new feed-in tariffs (FITs) for the first quarter range from €0.2349 ($0.25)/kWh for installations below 3 kW in size to €0.1287/kWh for arrays ranging in capacity from 100 kW to 500 kW.