Connecting renewable energy sources: 10% of French territory already saturated

The connection of renewable energies (wind and photovoltaic) has seen a strong acceleration in recent years: 6,6 GW were thus connected to the Enedis distribution network in 2025, compared to 5,5 GW in 2024 and 4,2 GW in 2023, in particular due to solar energy production in agricultural operations.

This acceleration in certain areas, particularly rural ones, has sometimes outpaced infrastructure development.

"We have a development mainly of photovoltaics, rather in rural areas," explained Cédric Boissier, connection director at Enedis, during a joint press briefing with the transport network manager RTE.

These rural areas, where consumption is not necessarily the highest, represent "about two-thirds of the development of renewable energies" in recent years, which "can indeed, in the management of the network, bring about a number of difficulties", particularly in terms of the distribution of this energy production, he added.

Enedis has put online on its website a map of France where saturated areas are listed in red, such as the south of the Centre-Val-de-Loire region, or departments in the southwest like Lot-et-Garonne or in the Grand Est like the Vosges department.

These are areas requiring "more than five years to connect", due to the need to develop new infrastructure, such as substations, which allow the RTE network to be connected to the Enedis network, by transforming very high voltage into high voltage.

Lot-et-Garonne has thus seen the power of renewable energies connected to the network more than triple in six years.

With this map, Enedis and RTE inform producers and project developers of renewable energy, such as agricultural sheds, small industrial companies, car parks or small shopping centres.

Enedis, which currently has some 2.300 substations across the country, plans to build around a hundred new ones by 2030, "two-thirds" of which will be dedicated to renewable energies.

The distribution network manager nevertheless emphasizes "the advantage of having in France a network that is historically well-sized", with "90% of the territory" on which "there is capacity to connect renewable energies", unlike neighboring countries such as Spain or the Netherlands, which are mostly saturated.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.