Swiss renewable energy developer Axpo has initiated commercial activities at France’s largest rooftop solar project, located at an industrial site and boasting a power generation capacity of 12.8MW.

The project is managed by Urbasolar, a subsidiary of Axpo, and is situated on a rooftop owned by French real estate development firm Percier Réalisation et Développement (PRD). Collaborating partners on the project include PRD and Harbert Management Corporation (HMC), an investment management company with a history of working alongside Urbasolar.

Antoine Millioud, the head of Axpo’s Solar Division, expressed his satisfaction with the Beauvais project, emphasizing the expertise that the Axpo Group, particularly through Urbasolar, has cultivated in France. He expressed confidence in their ability to continue driving the energy transition and enhancing supply security across Europe through their proficiency in implementing large-scale solar installations.

Axpo has an extensive pipeline of over 10GW of renewable power capacity spread across six European countries, with 1.2GW allocated for its home country, Switzerland. The company’s track record includes the successful completion of over 700 utility-scale projects in France alone.

According to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, France has witnessed significant growth in its solar portfolio in recent years, with an installed capacity of 20GW by the end of 2023. Furthermore, the country commissioned nearly 1GW of new solar projects in the last quarter of that year.

The government is planning to operate 60GW of solar capacity by 2030, and the commissioning of a landmark rooftop solar project will help realise this ambition. Axpo alone operates 190MW of rooftop solar capacity in France, and in recent years, the government passed legislation to exempt PV projects of less than 300kW from preliminary environmental assessments, to encourage the greater implementation of small-scale solar projects in the residential sector in particular.