The French Ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion has awarded 971MW of ground-mount solar capacity, to 165 projects, in the eighth round of the second Programmation Pluriannuelle de l’Energie (PPE2) PV tender.
Launched in 2021, the PPE2 tender builds on a previous tender, and aims to award 29GW of power capacity before 2026. The eighth round of the tender saw more projects and more total capacity awarded than in the previous session – 165 projects compared to 103 and 971MW of capacity compared to 887.5MW, respectively – and saw the average power price awarded for the tendered projects increase slightly.
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While the power price of €79.5/MWh (US$93.2/MWh) is the highest in the last three rounds, and an increase over the €79.1/MWh offered in the previous round, held in March, this figure represents a significant stabilisation in the average power prices offered. As shown in the graph below, the last three rounds have all delivered an average power price of around €79/MWh, compared to power prices above €80/MWh in the three previous rounds, and power prices below €70/MWh in the first two rounds.
The graph also demonstrates that, for the last five rounds, the government has awarded capacity roughly in line with its targets for each round, represented in yellow. Following significantly undersubscribed auctions in August 2022 and April 2023, and spiralling power prices, the government significantly increased the target for the fourth round of the tender, stabilising power prices offered to winning bids.
This stability is a positive development for a French solar sector that had an ominous start to the year. The government revised down its 2035 solar PV installation target by 10GW in March, and its rooftop tender completed in the same month saw just 220MW of capacity awarded out of a target of 400MW.
Neoen leads capacity awards as winning bids spread across more companies
The eighth auction round also saw winning bids significantly more evenly distributed between winning bidders than in previous rounds. According to French advisory firm Finergreen, 68 developers made winning bids in the eighth round, and 55 of them made bids for less than 20MW of capacity.
The bidders to account for the largest proportion of the total capacity awarded – Générale du solaire, Urbasolar and Engie – received just 9%, 7% and 6% of the total awarded capacity. This compares to the previous round, where Urbasolar alone was awarded 26% of the total capacity, and top three companies accounted for 51% of the total capacity awarded.
Urbasolar is now the company with the third-most awarded capacity across all rounds of the PPE2 tender, with 427MW of capacity awards. This is below Neoen, with 684WM, and EDF, with 659MW, with the top 25 developers receiving awards for 4.9GW of capacity across all eight rounds, according to Finergreen.
