France’s wind capacity deployments drop in Q1

The French wind power industry saw the commissioning of 281 MW of wind turbine capacity in the first quarter of 2024, coming from onshore turbines only, the latest statistics show.

The quarterly deployments marked a significant drop from the year-ago period when 881 MW of wind farms went online, including the Saint-Brieuc offshore park. Still, the additions brought the country’s cumulative installed wind farm capacity to 23,769 MW, of which 22,293 MW onshore and 1,476 MW offshore.

At the end of March, 57% of the onshore wind capacity in France was from installations of between 8 MW and 12 MW. Seven offshore plants are operating in national waters. For the past quarter, the regions of Grand Est and Hauts-de-France were the leaders in terms of newly added capacity with 87 MW and 64 MW installed, respectively.

France’s wind parks produced 15.8 TWh of electricity in the three months and were responsible for 15.5% of the national electricity consumption. The power output rose by 5% from the year-ago period.

Around 15,400 MW of wind projects were in the permitting stages at the end of March. The total includes 12,200 MW of onshore and 3,200 MW of offshore projects undergoing permitting.

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