Image: EDF Group
EDF Group announced the launch of its Solar Power Plan yesterday, an ambitious program with a goal to install 30 gigawatts of solar power capacity in France between 2020 – 2035.
This amount would be around four times greater than France’s existing total solar energy capacity of 7.4GW (June 2017 figure). 30 gigawatts would represent approximately 120,000,000 solar panels with a 250 watt output, or 100,000,000 modules of 300W capacity.
” This effort comes in addition to our plans for expanding on wind and hydro capacity. It is a further sign of the Group’s commitment to the energy transition,” said Chairman-Chief Executive of EDF Energies Nouvelles, Antoine Cahuzac.
EDF says the rollout would generate “tens of thousands” of jobs during the construction period, building on its current 154,000 employees worldwide.
The plants will be constructed on land close to EDF’s nuclear power plants, on remedied industrial wasteland and it appears there will also be some floating solar installations at its hydroelectric sites. The company will also work with government authorities to identify other suitable sites.
EDF Group states it currently has 918 MWp of solar in service in 8 countries, plus 330MWp of solar capacity under construction. Its four largest currently operating plants are all in France:
- Toul (115 MWp) in Meurthe-et-Moselle, eastern France
- Le Gabardan (67 MWp) in Les Landes, south-western France
- Crucey (60 MWp) in Eure-et-Loir, central France
- Massangis (56 MWp) in Yonne, central France
Currently, 78% of EDF Group’s electricity generation is via nuclear power and just 3% is coal.
The company also has significant wind power assets – 7,912 MW of onshore capacity and 1,060MW under construction; plus several major offshore wind projects in the pipeline.
In other news from EDF, the company also announced yesterday it had joined the Climate Group’s EV100 initiative. EDF Group has committed to convert its entire fleet to electric vehicles by 2030.
“We believe in the importance of developing electric mobility in cities and regions. For us, joining the EV100 initiative demonstrates this ambition,” said EDF CEO and Chairman, Jean-Bernard Lévy.
The Climate Group’s Helen Clarkson says businesses have a huge opportunity to play a leading role in accelerating the uptake and bringing down the cost of electric vehicles.
EDF Group joins other companies including Air New Zealand, IKEA and HP Inc. in the initiative and is the first French company to sign onto the EV100.
About Michael Bloch
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What is “MWp” ?
MWp stands for “megawatts peak” which means peak electrical output. Here we just say MW for megawatts as when talking about solar PV it almost always means the total rated capacity of solar panels in a system. They may be using MWp in France because they have a lot of nuclear power there which sometimes has its capacity given in MWt which is “megawatts thermal”. This can be misleading since it is about 3 times higher than electrical output.
Hello, Ronald.
Thank you for your explanation.
Perhaps, we should change the convention, and, more accurately, use “rc”, for rated capacity.
As an example, the two systems here, have 5kW of panels, , but, the “peak electrical output” is somewhere around 4.4kW, as the orientations of the two systems, are about WSW and ENE, giving maximum, or, peak, efficiency of about 80%.
Or, perhaps, in retrospect, instead of using MWp for representing MW “peak electrical output”, it would be better for the data to be expressed universally, as “MW of panels”, to avoid any lack of clarity and inaccuracy.
The part
“They may be using MWp in France because they have a lot of nuclear power there which sometimes has its capacity given in MWt which is “megawatts thermal”. This can be misleading since it is about 3 times higher than electrical output.”, reminds me of a poster that I saw, about 40 years ago, with the words “Can nuclear power give you whiter teeth? You bet your life!”, with a picture of a yellow skull, with nice, white teeth.
It is a bit like “Can coal fired power cook your potatoes more thoroughly? WE bet YOUR lives!”, with the photograph published at http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/8256154-3×2-940×627.jpg .