France brings live 500 MW of wind farms in H1

France connected to its main power network 500 MW of wind turbine capacity in the first half of 2021, or 23% more than in the year-ago period, the latest government statistics show.

A total of 49 wind parks started feeding electricity into the grid, while 39 power plants with a combined capacity of 407 MW were brought online in the previous year. Installations with individual capacities of between 8 MW and 12 MW had the highest contribution and accounted for around 61% of the overall capacity that was put on steam in January-June.

Hauts-de-France and New Aquitaine were the regions with the highest installed capacity in the first half -- adding 151 MW and 95 MW, respectively.

The first-half deployments lifted France’s total installed wind turbine generation capacity to 18.310 MW. The total came at 17,810 MW a year earlier. The country’s wind parks produced 19.9 TWh of electricity in the first half of this year and were responsible for 8.2% of the national electricity consumption. The power output was 7% lower from a year before due to the less favourable weather conditions.

At the end of June, France had 14.4 GW of wind projects in the pipeline, of which 3.9 GW with grid-connection agreements in place.

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