France's wind deployments drop in Q1

France brought live 247 MW of wind farms in the first quarter of 2020, which brought its cumulative installed grid-connected wind power capacity to 16,897 MW, new statistics show.

The data released by the French government last week indicates that the newly-commissioned capacity in January-March decreased by 10% from the first quarter of 2019 when 275 MW of wind parks became operational. The region of Hauts-de-France took the top position in terms of overall capacity installed in the first quarter with 127 MW of new plants.

In spite of the year-on-year decrease in new installations, the cumulative grid-connected wind capacity at the end of March was 1% higher from a year before, with almost two-thirds of that total coming from power plants with capacities of between 8 MW and 12 MW. The bulk of the capacity, of around 16,803 MW is situated in mainland France.

The country’s wind parks produced about 14.5 TWh of electricity in the first quarter, marking a 44% year-on-year improvement due to the favourable weather conditions. Wind farms were responsible for 10.8% of the national electricity consumption.

At the end of March, France had 12.9 GW of wind projects under construction, of which 3.03 GW of offshore plants. The total includes 2.5 GW of projects that have already signed grid-connection contracts.

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!