French transmission system operator, Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE) has revealed in an ad-hoc release that renewable energies reached a share of 31% in the country’s electricity mix in the second quarter of this year. This represents a level that has not been reached since the 1960s, before the massive development of nuclear power.
RTE said this result was the combination of three main factors: significant hydropower generation, which covered around 20% of French electricity consumption during the period; an increasing share of wind, solar, and bio-energies which were able to account for over 10% of demand; and the fact that the second quarter of the year is traditionally characterized by lower demand than during the autumn and winter months.
According to the latest statistics released by the French Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition (CSFD), the first quarter of this year has seen a strong growth in new PV installations, with 246 MW of new PV capacity added. Overall, France’s installed solar power had reached around 8.3 GW as of the end of March. This, however, amounted to just 1.1% of France’s total power production for the latest quarter.
69% of demand in the second quarter was covered by nuclear power plants. This share is planned to be reduced to around 50% by 2025, according to recent announcements from the French government. The national state-owned utility, EDF, which is also the owner and operator of most of the country’s nuclear power assets, announced in December 2017 a plan to deploy 30 GW of solar plants in France by 2030.
Meanwhile, France’s Directorate General for Energy and Climate, which is controlled by the CSFD, is defining a tender for the deployment of 300 MW of solar at the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, which is the country’s oldest nuclear site.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.