French solar power plants generate 3.8 TWh in H1 2016

Aug 29, 2016 11:40 CEST by Mariyana Yaneva

August 29 – Photovoltaic (PV) power plants in France generated 3.8 TWh of electricity in the first half of 2016, marking a 12% increase on the year, statistic data of the energy ministry shows.

Solar power supplied 1.5% of the electricity demand in France over the period in review, slightly up from 1.4% achieved a year ago.

At the end of June, grid-connected PV capacity in France totalled 6,911 MW.

New projects with a total capacity of 336 MW joined the grid throughout the first six months of the year, down by 14% on the year and also the lowest half-year growth recorded since 2013.

Over two-thirds of the newly added capacity came from projects larger than 250 kWp in capacity. More details on the size of the new installations is given in the table below.

Size	H1 installs	Cumulative at June 30, 2016
Below 3 kW	8	759 MW
3 – 9 kW	34	368 MW
9 – 36 kW	6	416 MW
36 – 100 kW	26	862 MW
100 – 250 kW	33	1,002 MW
Over 250 kW	228	3,505 MW
Total	336	6,911 MW

The south of France, more accurately the Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes and Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrenees regions remain the two most attractive places in terms of PV projects with 85 MW and 115 MW installed from January till June, respectively.

Thus the former reached 1,680 MW of total capacity, while the latter hit 1,390 MW.

France had a pipeline of 21,634 PV power projects with a combined capacity of 2,141 MW at the end of June. Of these, 11,276 projects with a total capacity of 593 MW have already signed grid-connection contracts.

At the end of July, energy regulator Commission de Regulation de l’Energie (CRE) said it will further reduce the tariffs for purchase of electricity from small solar photovoltaic (PV) systems connecting to the grid in the third quarter of 2016.

Just a few days ago, France announced its timetable for a series of tenders for 3 GW of new solar power facilities in a drive to achieve an ambitious target of increasing its cumulative solar capacity to between 18.2 GW and 20.2 GW by 2023.

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