France surpasses 4 GW of installed photovoltaic solar energy in 2012

France’s Ministry of Energy, Ecology and Sustainable Development has released its annual report on wind energy and solar photovoltaics (PV), which finds that the nation added 1.08 GW of new PV capacity in over 34,500 plants in 2012.

While this is a 39% decrease compared to 2011 installations, it also increases France’s cumulative capacity by 37% to over 4 GW.

Plants over 250 kW represented the majority of new capacity, with 249 plants totaling 632 MW.

The majority of this capacity at 763 MW was added in the first half of the year, and the nation’s fourth quarter 2012 PV market was its lowest since 2008 at 75 MW.

The Provence-Alpes-C