France’s ninth auction for ground-based solar PV has seen 452MWp awarded.
This capacity is spread across 69 winners, with the average price proposed by the winners coming in at €60.10/MWh (US$72.94), an increase of 4.7% on the previous period.
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When broken down, the proposed price for installations above 5MWp was €53.38/MWh, whilst for installations between 500kWp and 5MWp it was €62.65/MWh. A third category in the auction – for installations on parking lot shades – saw a price of €80.69/MWh.
Winners of the latest auction include a number of Engie projects including three 5MWc projects and two 10MWc sites as well as several Urbasolar projects with a variety of capacities including an 11.62MWc site in the Grand Est region. Other winners include EDF, ib vogt GmBH and Neoen among others according to analysis posted by French financial advisor Finergreen on social media site LinkedIn.
Finergreen outlined how Neoen was the biggest winner of the auction, with 73.8MWc contracted for, followed by Engie with 61.4MWc and then Total Quadron with 49.4MWc.
When compared to the previous auction – France’s eighth, with the results released in October 2020 – prices have risen, with the eight auction seeing prices of €57.4/MWh (US$68/MWh), with this price being down 7.4% from the preceeding seventh auction. That eighth auction saw 341MW contracted for, with the auction oversubscribed.
In response to the results for the eighth auction, the French Ministry of Ecological Transition said the drop in price “confirms the drop in costs, the dynamism and the competitiveness”.
Prices also fell in France’s latest auction for projects in territories not connected to the country’s main grid network, with the results of this third auction being announced in January 2021. A total of 57MW of solar-plus-storage projects received contracts, with prices dipping below €100/MWh (US$122.75/MWh).