The French Ministry of the Ecological Transition has published the results of a tender for innovative PV technologies under the nation's new PPE2 tendering mechanism, which was launched in late 2021.

The authorities allocated 172.9 MW of solar power in the procurement exercise. They originally planned to assign just 140 MW, including 60 MW of ground-mounted installations ranging in size from 500 kW to 3 MW, and 80 MW of rooftop projects with capacities ranging from 100 kW to 3 MW.

The second category includes agrivoltaics, solar carports, and other innovative rooftop arrays. Overall, the ministry selected 66 projects, including 30 for the first category (around 80 MW) and 36 for the second (around 92 MW).

French consultancy Finergreen notes that Urbasolar led in the total number of projects, with 14 innovative PV plants on the ground, or 40.1 MW of capacity. With 12 projects in the 2nd category, for 32.9 MW, Sun’R / Rgreen came in second place. TotalEnergies Renouvelables had 6 MW, followed by Corsica Sole with 15 MW, Iberdrola with 12 MW, Générale du Solaire with 11 MW, and Technique Solaire with 7.4 MW. Eleven other developers also obtained approximately 6 MW of projects.

The list includes a very large number of 3 MW projects. Finergreen said “the average size of projects is 2.6 MW and that, surprisingly, it is similar in the two eligible categories.” It also noted that the average allocated tariff of €0.08446 ($0.090)/kWh was much lower than the maximum tariffs set by French regulator of €0.120/kWh and €0.15/kWh.