With the recent announcement of the winning bids of the second call for tenders from the French Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE, Commission de Régulation de l’Energie) for the creation and operation of solar power plants with installed capacity of more than 250 kWc, Soitec, the global manufacturer in semi-conductor materials for electronics and energy, sees its concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules included in 80% of the projects selected.

Published in March 2013, the CRE’s second call for tenders calls for allocation of a volume of 20 MWc for ground plants exclusively based on CPV technology, plus a volume of 80 MWc for ground plants based on at least 50% on CPV, with a total minimum of 60 MWc allocated to CPV technology.

The 16 projects finally selected further to this call for tenders represent a volume of 102.94 MWc. Thirteen of them (more than 80%) plan to use CPV modules manufactured by Soitec.

José Bériot, vice president of Solar Projects Development with Soitec’s Solar Energy division, explains: "Seeing our products present in a significant majority of the projects selected in this second call for tenders from the CRE is a great achievement for us. Overall, it represents a volume of more than 50 MWc for Soitec. This success is proof that our customers recognize the performance and reliability of our modules, and our ability to achieve profitability for future power plants."

Construction of the projects that have just been selected should be completed by spring of 2016, and the winning developers are now selecting the EPC contractors with whom they will partner on the construction sites.