Costs have fallen in the latest French onshore windenergy tender, according to the results released by the French Government. 22 projects totalling 508 MW have won the tender. The weighted average winning price was €65 MW/h.
This was lower than the current tariff for smaller projects (€72 MW/h) and the €82 MW/h Feed-in Tariff previously awarded. Under the new scheme, wind farms will sell their electricity with guarantees on revenues for 20 years. For the first time, projects were eligible for a bonus if they included crowd-funding, which was the case for a third of projects. The French Government welcomed the results and said it would extend the competitive tender model to more wind farms in future. It previously only applied to wind farms with at least seven turbines or with one or several turbines with nominal capacity strictly higher than 3 MW. The French Government is tendering a total of 3 GW of wind energy capacity in six stages over three years. The second competitive tender for 500 MW will be open from 1 May to 1 June 2018.