France cuts renewable energy grid connection costs

PARIS, Sept 25 (Reuters) – France will cut the grid connection costs of renewable energy and biogas installations by 40 percent, the energy ministry said in a statement on Monday. It said that the state would spend about 30 million euros ($36 million) per year on the rollout of renewable energy installations. It said that 60 percent of the cost of connecting a biogas plant to the gas grid would remain with the power producer in order to maintain an incentive for optimising the location of the plants. The government support for the grid connection costs of power generation with renewable energy will be widened to small and medium size power producers. So far, only consumers and grid operators benefited from a grid connection discount. The level of state support will decrease as capacity increases in order to boost distributed power generation.

Source:Reuters