T-Solar owns 29 solar parks across Spain, including the 1.1MW La Seca (pictured).
Photograph: T-Solar
T-Solar teams with Global Ecopower to tap French solar market
Spain’s T-Solar has teamed up with Global Ecopower to build open-field solar parks in France, indicating that France’s decision to tamp down its world-beating feed-in tariffs (FITs) has not curbed developers’ appetite.
The joint venture, to be called T-SEP, looks to install 120 megawatts (MW) over the next three years. Madrid-based T-Solar joins a growing queue of foreign developers looking to France to make up for slackened demand in the German and Spanish solar markets.
On 12 January the French government downwardly revised the solar FITs it had proposed for the next three years due to the speculative bubble the new subsidy regime was creating.
However, experts say France’s highly differentiated system of FITs is still among the most generous in the world. Ground-mounted systems are set to receive between €0.31 ($0.43) and €0.38 – or as much as 26% more than in Germany, according to Global Ecopower.
Global Ecopower was launched in Aix-en-Provence in early 2009 by Jean-Marie Santander, founder and former chief executive of troubled French wind developer Théolia. Santander left Théolia in 2008, taking a handful of senior managers with him. On 21 January the firm was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
T-Solar owns a thin-film panel factory in San Cibrao das Viñas, Spain, with an annual output of 45MW. In addition it owns 28 solar parks scattered around Spain with a name-plate capacity of 143MW.
Published: Tuesday, February 2 2010
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