{"id":7004,"date":"2026-04-17T16:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7004\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T16:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:14:13","slug":"solar-auctions-to-provide-security-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7004\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar auctions to provide security in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts from the trade body told PV Tech Premium that a \u201ccomplementary\u201d relationship between the two mechanisms would be to the benefit of European renewables as a whole<\/a>, and Dray says that the French regulator CRE (Commission de r\u00e9gulation de l\u2019\u00e9nergie) has taken steps to remove uncertainty in French solar financing.<\/p>\n

\u201cCRE wanted to better regulate it to give it more stability and visibility for the renewable players there,\u201d Dray explains. \u201cThey did revise the targets [for renewable energy deployment], and they\u2019re a bit lower now, and all this creates uncertainty in terms of developers.\u201d<\/p>\n

These targets were lowered in February this year, with the launch of the third iteration of the French Programmation\u00a0Pluriannuels\u00a0d\u2019Energie (PPE3). While PPE2 aimed to have 100GW of operational capacity in place by 2035, PPE3 first aimed for a maximum of 90GW by this date<\/a>, and this target was reduced further to 55-81GW in February in the final iteration of PPE3. Dray notes, however, that PPE3 has also finalised the date for the next round of French clean energy auctions, to be held in July, and is hopeful that this will introduce a degree of certainty to the investment landscape.<\/p>\n

Auctions to provide security for developers<\/p>\n

\u201cMany players are waiting for this auction, especially for the auction result, to move with their development pipelines,\u201d Dray explains. \u201cIt\u2019s always oversubscribed\u2014each time they grant 900-950MW but it\u2019s always oversubscribed\u2014so there is a will there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dray adds that it is important to capitalise on this desire to build new solar capacity in France, as otherwise, French developers may simply relocate to other countries with more attractive auction options.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I see, personally, is French developers, those who can and those who are not very small, try to diversify, and they go and start developing in other countries,\u201d she says. \u201cI see several French companies in Italy now, looking to form joint ventures \u2026 some of them looking at Poland and Romania.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the other side, all of this uncertainty has had an influence on companies that are going through business restructure if they are only France focused, with this uncertainty you\u2019re not able to guarantee your future revenue anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is notable, considering the value that robust government auctions have had in the energy mixes of these other European countries. In recent weeks, PV Tech Premium has heard from R.Power about how the legacy of auction support in Germany has been \u201cvery important\u201d in making investment decisions in the country<\/a>, and from Sonnedix about how both solar and storage auctions in Italy have become \u201ccrucial\u201d parts of the investment landscape<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a result, Dray says July\u2019s auctions in France carry \u201ca lot of hope\u201d for investors and would-be developers. This auction will offer 925MW of ground-mounted PV, alongside what Dray calls a \u201csimplified\u201d auction for small-scale solar, and will be the first solar-specific auction to be offered in France.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the latest months we\u2019ve seen the industry [have] low morale [and ask]: \u2018Where are we going?\u2019 \u2018What\u2019s the future?\u2019 because contracts for difference (CfDs) were not very clear until they published something,\u201d Dray says. \u201cIt\u2019s more about the future, because if they reduce the targets \u2026 you\u2019re killing a lot of gigawatts there in the pipeline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tackling negative hours with storage<\/p>\n

\u201cFrench utility-scale solar still relies heavily on auction-backed CfD-style support, which remains the most bankable route to market,\u201d says Dray, highlighting the importance of auctions in making projects bankable. This is particularly important in France because, as she explains, France suffers from \u201ca lot\u201d of negative pricing hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrance also suffers from a lot of negative hours,\u201d she says. \u201cLess than Germany or Spain, but there are still negative hours (RTE recorded 513 negative-price hours in 2025, up from 352 in 2024). [This] market is facing growing midday price depression and lower solar capture values.\u201d<\/p>\n

She adds that \u201cthere is a will to regulate new capacity added\u201d as capture rates have fallen considerably in recent years, from 97% in 2022 to 60% last year. Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are one obvious tool to tackle this issue, but, unlike Italy, which is planning to offer auctions for co-located solar and storage projects in its upcoming FER Z auction, there is no such government support for storage in France.<\/p>\n

Dray argues that this could be an area where the French auction needs to change in the future, as the demands of the energy transition move away from simply deploying as much capacity as possible to delivering a robust and adaptable energy system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more looking at the future additions of power to the grid in terms of flexibility [and] in terms of what the network is going to look like, and not just bringing more and more volumes of cheap energy online,\u201d she says. \u201cPolicy is increasingly steering projects toward PV-plus-storage, especially because CRE has proposed changes to large-scale PV support rules to better reflect negative-price risk and encourage co-located storage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s inevitable, integrating storage. Maybe this is what\u2019s going to help the auctions, because if we\u2019re thinking more about future solar deployment, and building a more useful solar rather than just deploying megawatts, [for] the power system itself, it will be easier to reconduct, each time, the auctions.\u201d<\/p>\n

PPAs are \u2018complementary rather than dominant\u2019 in France<\/p>\n

The combination of auctions providing greater investment certainty and France potentially taking inspiration from Italy\u2019s solar-plus-storage auction could imply that auctions and CfDs are the only way to secure finance for solar PV in France.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Dray notes that there has been a general cooling in PPA appetite in France too, which is in line with similar trends across Europe. This week, LevelTen\u2019s latest report into European PPA prices found that the average price of a solar PPA signed in Europe fell 4% between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 to \u20ac55.05\/MWh (US$64.83\/MWh)<\/a>, and Dray says this is prompting a question from would-be market entrants: \u201cWhy should I sign for 10-15 years if the prices are so low?\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Dray argues that while auctions are the first choice for many developers, there is still space for corporate PPAs as a financing mechanism, particularly as CfD and PPA prices are \u201cwithout a big difference\u201d in France at present.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn France, we had \u20ac74.13\/MWh for the last CfD average awarded price for ground-mounted PV\u2014so between \u20ac70-80\/MWh\u2014and PPAs are around that range, without a big difference,\u201d she says, suggesting that this is true beyond France too. \u201cIn Germany, for example, the CfD is \u20ac40-50\/MWh for solar, while PPAs are slightly higher, around \u20ac45-55\/MWh.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state-backed auction\/CfD route remains the most standard bankable path, while PPAs are complementary rather than dominant,\u201d she explains. \u201cCRE\u2019s PPA observatory supports the point that PPAs are still a developing route to market in France.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still there; it\u2019s another vehicle to make a project bankable if you didn\u2019t get the CfD auction, and if you need external financing you\u2019ll go for a PPA, but the volumes became less. But that\u2019s a general tendency in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experts from the trade body told PV Tech Premium that a \u201ccomplementary\u201d relationship between the two mechanisms would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2948,73,1337,5,2079,5811,5812,5813,5814],"class_list":{"0":"post-7004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-auctions","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-investment","13":"tag-power-prices","14":"tag-power-purchase-agreements","15":"tag-ppa","16":"tag-res"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}