France plans six 500 MW tenders

The French energy ministry has announced a plan to launch a total of six tenders of solar photovoltaic (PV) power of 500 MW each. 

The plan involves the launching of 500 MW tender processes at six month intervals between 2017 and 2020 (the first round of bidding ends on February 1, 2017). The tenders will be available to ground-mounted PV systems with a total capacity between 500 kW and 17 MW.

To be more specific, each tender will include 300 MW capacity for solar farms larger than 5 MW, 135 MW for plants with a capacity between 500 kW and 5 MW and 65 MW for PV systems on carports sized between 500 kW and 10 MW.

The 3GW solar tenders are part of a plan to increase the country's solar generation capacity to 20.2 GW by 2023. Additionally, in May this year, the country established a new subsidiary for solar power offering a premium on top of the market price. France currently has about 6.7 GW of total installed solar PV capacity. 

The country is boosting the development of renewable energy projects. In early August we reported that the French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal announced two winners of France's tender for pilot floating offshore wind farms. The two winners were the following:

• Eolfi and CGN Europe Energy (24 MW project near the island of Groix)
• Quadran-led EolMed consortium (24 MW project near Gruissan)