Solar-plus-storage costs drop once again in French island area public auction

• Costs of solar-plus-storage systems to be released on France's island areas have actually dropped once more in the nation's newest public auction, dipping below EUR100/MWh (US$ 122.75/ MWh).

Outcomes for the 3rd annual edition of France's tender for projects in areas not connected to the nation's major grid network have been announced, with a total amount of 57MW of solar-plus-storage projects obtaining agreements.

The guidelines of the tender state that each MWp of solar deployed should be paired with a minimum of 0.5 MW/0.5 MWh of battery storage in order to enable higher self-consumption of renewable resource capability.

Developers working on island regions consisting of Guadeloupe, Corsica as well as Martinique in addition to French Guyana - not an island yet not attached to the French grid for noticeable factors - have been awarded contracts for around 50MW of solar PV capacity annually considering that the public auctions started to be held each year in 2016, although the very first such auction in fact occurred in 2012.

The most current results, revealed by the Ministry for Ecological Transformation, are for a tender round opened up in 2019. The 47 projects will get payment using long-term power purchase arrangements (PPAs) backed by the federal government at an average tariff of EUR98.6 (US$ 120.81) per MWh. Tidy Horizon's analysts explained that this is the first the average costs of projects in among the tenders has actually fallen below EUR100/MWh.