Article published on www.solarserver.com/solar-magazine on March, 1st 2013
France's Ministry of Energy, Ecology and Sustainable Development has released its annual report on wind and solar photovoltaics (PV), which finds that the nation added 1.08 GW of new PV capacity in over 34,500 plants in 2012.
While this is a 39% decrease compared to 2011 installations, it also increases France's cumulative capacity by 37% to over 4 GW. Plants over 250 kW represented the majority of new capacity, with 249 plants totaling 632 MW.
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| France's southeast departments lead the nation in installed PV capacity |
Geographical distribution broadens
The majority of this capacity at 763 MW was added in the first half of the year, and the nation's fourth quarter 2012 PV market was its lowest since 2008 at 75 MW.
The Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region continued to lead new installations at 139 MW, however the Aquitaine, Lorraine, and Midi-Pyrénées regions also installed more than 100 MW each in 2012.
According to the French grid operator, the nation's PV plants produced roughly 4 TWh in 2012, to meet 0.8% of French electricity demand.
2.84 GW project pipeline
France has another 2.84 GW of PV projects awaiting approval, including 494 MW for which an interconnection agreement has been signed.
The Ministry notes that the capacity of projects for which completion is expected in the coming months and an interconnection agreement has been signed declined 6% during the quarter.
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