What are the legal levers available to public actors to benefit from third-party financing for self-consumption?

Here is an analysis of the solutions available to combine energy transition and regulatory compliance.

What legal arrangements are suitable for public stakeholders to benefit from third-party investment in a self-consumption PV installation?

Faced with the continuous decline in the regulated electricity purchase tariff for power plants of 36 to 500 kWp, the ACI or ACC model with third-party financing* represents a major opportunity for the energy transition because it makes it possible to meet, without investment, the obligations of the APER law and the Tertiary Decree in particular. Thus, decree S21 published on March 27, 2025 provides for a reduction of approximately 10% in the feed-in tariffs for photovoltaic energy produced for installations between 100 kWp and 500 kWp. This confirms the regulator's tendency to want to promote self-consumption, whose photovoltaic production model is less dependent on State subsidies.

ACI energy is consumed directly on the production site and results in significant tax savings: exemption from excise duty and the majority of components of the Public Electricity Network Usage Tariff (TURPE).

As for the ACC, it is an arrangement by which the electricity produced by the photovoltaic equipment of one or more producers is distributed among one or more end consumers organized around a PMO (organizing legal entity). ACC operations take place on several sites and the electricity passes through the network, unlike the ACI. The ACC can take different forms: the patrimonial ACC when the same entity self-consumes electricity on several different sites. The open or multi-actor ACC in the case of multiple producers and consumers.

To facilitate financing, public stakeholders can create companies with majority public capital. Moreover, the SVE bill provides for the opening of a specific vehicle: the single-operation mixed economy company (SEMOP), which combines a private company, holding at least 15% of the shareholding, and a local authority with a blocking minority, to all public stakeholders, not just local authorities.

What are the contractual frameworks and rules to be respected?

The procedural framework of the ACI and the heritage ACC should not be equated with open ACC projects. In the latter case, it is sufficient to launch a Call for Expressions of Interest (CEI) whose purpose is to rent roofs or parking lots in return for rent paid for occupation by a producer selling its electricity.

The ACI and the patrimonial ACC, on the other hand, respond to a need of the public entity. The conclusion of a simple lease is not enough. Why? Because if a lease has already been concluded with a candidate during an AMI, then competition, transparency, and equal treatment of candidates are necessarily distorted due to the clear advantage held by the leaseholder.

Furthermore, since the 2016 reform of the public procurement code, so-called round-trip contractual arrangements (“outbound” contract: for the rental of the land; “return” contract for the provision of the power plant) are prohibited.

Also, in ACI or patrimonial ACC, it is necessary to launch a call for tenders, more restrictive than the AMI, with specific advertising and competition rules for the conclusion of a public procurement contract, which must be chosen and drafted carefully so as to respect full payment after service provided, the prohibition of deferred payments (smoothed over time) remaining the exception.

Column by Alice Folscheid, legal manager at Faradae (LinkedIn).