l'Actualité du Solaire

In the same week, the news covered the light and shade spectrum of photovoltaics: there was a partnership between two complementary companies to ensure temperature control in buildings. As with all presentations of new products (energy-producing glass, home automation, management of energy production from solar systems, etc.), the public is resistant to these new products. Even the installation of solar power plants is often rejected by the inhabitants. Photovoltaics are not part of everyday life

On the other hand, there are the power plants that have been installed as a result of government tenders, which have been largely supported by the French state. Above all, there is a new dynamic that is being established with the energy purchase agreements (EPAs) that companies are signing to obtain cheaper electricity. For the planet? Not at all! Not even for photovoltaics!

Summary

What's wrong with photovoltaicsMany useful innovations and processes are not finding their way to the market. The companies that market them are struggling or going bankrupt.

What works in photovoltaics: installations with tenders! The CRE has succeeded in its mission to find developers and constructors of power plants. It has extended its offers to innovations, buildings, non-interconnected areas, etc.

The energy purchase agreements (PPAs) are highly popular PPAs: they were launched about eighteen months ago and have been very successful, as they result in a reduction in the energy price of the purchasing companies. But there is no alternative use for nuclear electricity. Only the price attracts contract holders.

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The text

What is wrong with photovoltaics

The news of the merger between tado° and aWattar (see this week's article) leaves readers indifferent. They are right and wrong. Right because this merger does not change the photovoltaic industry, does not change the life of everyone, and above all the new entity will at best have the chance to survive and more certainly the probability to disappear.

The readers are wrong because the proposed application, that of measuring and managing the temperature in a house, has a great future, and presents multiple energy savings.

This application will join the many innovations, developments or innovative products whose authors or promoters do not manage to overcome the threshold of indifference. For example, energy management to enhance the value of solar panels is largely forgotten three or five years after their presentation. Others in the same niche have sought a wider audience by marketing panels, or have developed other products or processes such asenergy simulation software: the installer can simulate the customer's energy project and add his own parameters such as the expected increase in the price of electricity or the amount of investment incentives.

Some have taken to virtual batteries, or have developed a remote control to operate air conditioners remotely. Another example is the solar panel cleaning company that, after several unsuccessful years, put its process back on the market. Should we recall the craze that gripped American companies in favour of home automation, a niche that is largely forgotten today. Similarly, today, who thinks of placing a battery to manage their solar production?

If there is one lesson to be learned from these attempts, it is that photovoltaics has not caught on with the public. It remains based on ancestral habits and lifestyles that exclude any technology that is too new. If we wanted a figure: at the end of 2021, there were only 125,000 households that had set up self-consumption out of the thirty or forty million French households. As for the installation of solar systems on the roofs of buildings or homes, they are rather rare.

The manufacturers of photovoltaic components (panels) remain very discreet because they are competing with Chinese products. They give the impression that they are surviving and are unable to develop

What works in photovoltaics: installations with calls for tender!

The calls for tenders issued by the Commission de Régulation de l'Energie are successful because there is an offer to buy the energy at a price fixed at the outset and for twenty years. Almost every tender results in a surplus offer compared to the quantity offered. However, the maximum size of the lots offered, around 20 MW, does not allow the costs per kilowatt-hour to be reduced below €0.05, which is almost the same as for nuclear energy. Thus, there is the development of installations but they do not allow a reduction in costs to make a significant difference with nuclear energy. Therefore, EDF is quite happy to say that the electricity it produces is equivalent or even superior to that of renewable energies, which bear the burden of intermittency. The difference between the two generators remains in favour of nuclear.

Attempts are being made to increase the size of the installations, but they come up against the neighbourhood, nature conservation associations and the desire to preserve the landscape as it was before. A 300 MW power plant in the Causses had to be abandoned because of this opposition. A consultation procedure is underway for a 1 GW plant in the Landes. We will see what comes of it.

The CRE is accumulating installed power (12.3 GW at the end of December 2021) but from the outside we wonder what is being done with the energy produced. Is it only aggregated with nuclear production or is there a different policy for the two different sources? Is there a different allocation of this energy after its production? Which sector is favoured? Why is the installed capacity being increased? The policy following the installation of the plants is not yet defined

Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)

Large energy users have realised the value of entering into agreements for the supply of electricity at a fixed price and for a defined period. This is happening both in France and in other European countries. The American LevelTen Energy publishes aggregate data for Europe and not by country, which is a pity. It analyses the quarter of the cheapest contracts concluded during each quarter. The result is an increase of around 70% in the volume signed in ^Q4 2021 compared to ^Q3, with an average price for solar of €47.97 per megawatt hour. This figure mixes Spanish solar with German or Swedish solar, which is not very accurate. But it means that this average price is only slightly lower than that of the CRE tenders and the level of the kWh offered by EDF with its nuclear power plants. We estimate that the contracts concluded in France are at a price slightly below this €48.

Even if we do not have the volume of contracts concluded in Europe and of course in France, we can say that companies have understood the interest of these energy supplies. Developers do not need the administrative work to obtain a contract with a well-identified customer that they would have with a call for tenders from the CRE. Often the volume of contracts is higher than the volume of tenders. PPAs will develop and probably create their own environment for the use of renewable energy, as it is a matter of business law and not public law

While private contracts for the purchase or sale of renewable energy will develop, public authorities are well handicapped in valuing this energy. They can only give an impetus, but not replace private investors or financial institutions. They do not really control the amount of power that will be installed, as we have seen in France, where for many years, the public authorities have increased the volumes granted, but this has not been reflected in the volumes, except recently

However, some foreign governments, quite unwisely, have stated that their countries should get out of nuclear and coal at a rather distant date. As the years go by, the dates of the promises get closer and closer and harder to meet. While Belgium obtained 39% of its electricity in 2020 from nuclear power plants, one of its governments had set the end of 2025 as the date for phasing out these plants. How to replace the energy produced by renewable electricity in such a short time?

Germany wants to abandon nuclear power (11% of its electricity consumption) and coal (24%) by 2030. How can the government replace well-functioning power plants with others that have not yet been installed and whose operation is not controlled (intermittency in particular)?

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At the end of this overview, photovoltaics appears promising, but above all badly conceived in its management, without an overall plan and having built power plants up to now without knowing how to use the energy produced efficiently. In the background, NGOs are pushing for ambitious plans but without a vision of how to use the energy produced; how to get it adopted? How to put in place the mechanisms to use this energy or better (during the day, in which region, with which tariff, ...)? For the moment, we are launching photovoltaic, we are letting it develop but we do not know how to create the society that goes with it! What a waste of energy!