• Tracker technology, ie a system of piles drilled and implanted in the ground, allows the panels to follow the evolution of the sun.

  • The 55 GWh of green electricity produced by the plant covers the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption (excluding heating) of 33,000 inhabitants, ie approximately twice the population of Fos.

The national road on one side, the large hydrocarbon storage tanks of the southern European pipeline on the other, the new solar power plant in Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône) takes place in a strange man's land.

Inaugurated this Friday by TotalEnergies, under the greyness and the rain, the 80,000 photovoltaic panels do not have all their superb photogenicity.

Due to their technology, they nevertheless constitute, according to TotalEnergies, “the most powerful plant on trackers in France”.

The 55 GWh of green electricity produced covers the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption (excluding heating) of 33,000 inhabitants, ie approximately twice the population of Fos.

“We are on extremely flat ground which has allowed us to use this tracker technology, namely a system of piles drilled and implanted in the ground,” explains Damien Dolgopyatoff, renewable energy project manager at TotalEnergies.

Nearly 17,000 piles thus support the panels.

Concretely, they can thus automatically change orientation to follow the path of the sun, or even be placed flat on days with high winds.

"This avoids having a peak in energy production at noon, we are more in a curve in the form of a plateau", continues the project manager.

“Six years, compared to two in Germany”

Built on 49 hectares of land unused by the Société du Pipeline Sud Européen (SPSE), the plant meets high security challenges, particularly in terms of fire risk.

A wide track thus encircles the entire site, which also provides interstices for the small local fauna.

And as is often the case in solar power plants, sheep graze to maintain the site.

"The largest photovoltaic farm in the Bouches-du-Rhône arrives just after the convention to plan the ecological transition, which makes our territory the pilot region in France, and at a time when the national assembly is discussing the acceleration project of renewable energy production", says Jean-Michel Diaz, Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur and Corsica regional director of TotalEnergies France, recalling in passing the group's ambition to place itself in the top 5 by 2050. world of renewable energies.

“Today, we are more on the long term, he regrets.

It takes us six years to build such a plant, when everything goes well like here, when in Germany it takes two.

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"Land for real industrial activities!"

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Before cutting the ribbon with the other officials, the deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône (Renaissance), also chairman of the sustainable development commission, Jean-Marc Zulesi salutes for his part “the virtuous project of TotalEnergies”.

Less critical of Total, of which he was in favor of taxing the superprofits, he recognizes in this power station “the future”, “You show that we can combine ecology and a form of industry.

We must now work on a French industrial sector for the production of solar panels.

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After the 45,000 photovoltaic modules of the Fossette photovoltaic power plant, on a site belonging to ArcelorMittal.

The mayor of Fos-sur-Mer René Raimondi (various left) therefore sees a second solar power plant being installed in his town.

"We must beware of false virtuous ideas, such projects support activities without labor when our land should be devoted to real industrial activities", he launches in the form of a cold shower, to remind the different players present, public and private, to their responsibilities on alternatives to all-trucks and on more industrial ecological transition projects, such as hydrogen production.

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  • Planet

  • Electricity

  • Renewable energies

  • Photovoltaic

  • Marseilles

  • Paca

  • TotalEnergies

  • Solar energy