Biggest solar plant in Europe comes online

The biggest solar photovoltaic power plant in Europe is now fully online, according to reports in France.

The 300-megawatt Cestas solar project near Bordeaux, southwestern France, has connected to the grid after the last 12 megawatt portion of the power plant was added.

The plant, made up of 25 different 12 MW project portions, is the largest in the whole of Europe and will be officially inaugurated on 1 December.

The project was built by a consortium including Eiffage, Krinner, and Schneider Electric.

Patrick de Labrusse, the project director for Cestas consortium, said: “The Cestas project is full erected, the mechanical completion has been achieved since September 30, and now it has been fully connected to the grid… We are very satisfied because the consortium has performed very well and we’ve been able to execute what we anticipated to do at the beginning of the contract.”

de Labrusse added: “The handover was targeted for early January and we will be able to complete it in late November or in the early days of December.”