French solar power generation grows 15% in 9-mo 2016

Photovoltaic (PV) power plants in France generated 6.6 TWh of electricity in the first nine months of 2016, marking a 15% year-on-year increase, statistic data of the energy ministry shows.

Thus, photovoltaic (PV) power supplied 1.9% of the electricity demand in France over the period in review, up from 1.6% achieved during the same period a year ago.

At the end of September, grid-connected PV capacity in France came in at 7,017 MW.

A total of 449 MW joined the grid from January to September, down by 44% compared with the same period in 2015. However, the figures for 2015 were largely impacted by the launch of Europe's largest photovoltaic power plant -- the 300 MW Cestas solar farm near Bordeaux in France. Quarter-on-quarter, new PV installations grew 36%.

Over two-thirds of the newly added capacity during the year so far 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	9-mo new installs	Cumulative at September 30, 2016
Below 3 kW	12 MW	762 MW
3 - 9 kW	48 MW	383 MW
9 - 36 kW	8 MW	418 MW
36 - 100 kW	48 MW	881 MW
100 - 250 kW	46 MW	1,014 MW
Over 250 kW	288 MW	3,559 MW
Total	449 MW	7,017 MW

The south of France, more accurately the Occitanie and Nouvelle Aquitaine regions, attracted most of the PV project investments with 145 MW and 116 MW, respectively, installed over the first nine months of the year.

At the end of September, France had a pipeline of 20,608 PV power projects with a combined capacity of 2,419 MW. Of these, 11,236 projects with a total capacity of 808 MW have already signed grid-connection contracts.

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