France connected 1,495 MW of new solar capacity in the first quarter of 2026, according to data from French statistics agency SDES. This figure is slightly lower than the 1,571 MW recorded in the same period of 2025.
Installations above 500 kW accounted for 30% of this new capacity, but only 0.3% of new connections, while installations under 9 kW accounted for 74% of new connections, but only 7% of installed capacity.
Additions from the first quarter of this year bring France’s total solar capacity to 33 GW, of which 32.1 GW is in mainland France.
In the first quarter, gross photovoltaic electricity production from solar energy amounted to 6.6 TWh in metropolitan France, compared to 5.9 TWh a year earlier. Excluding self-consumption, production amounted to 6.2 TWh and represented 4.6% of metropolitan electricity consumption, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2025.
The SDES update also emphasizes that self-consumption continues to grow. In the first quarter of 2026, 62% of photovoltaic installations, representing 19% of installed capacity, produced electricity that was wholly or partially self-consumed. These shares rose by 1.5 and 0.5 percentage points compared to the fourth quarter of 2025.
A total of 481 GWh of photovoltaic electricity was self-consumed in metropolitan France in the first quarter of this year, which represents 7% of the total photovoltaic production. Fully self-consuming installations produced 247 GWh, accounting for 51% of self-consuming volumes.
Meanwhile, the capacity of projects in the grid connection pipeline decreased by 2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2025 and amounted to 36.1 GW, of which 8.4 GW already had a signed connection agreement.
The Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regions together accounted for 50% of France’s connected photovoltaic capacity as of March 31, 2026. Momentum remained strong in these areas, which represented 46% of new connected capacity during the quarter.
