Jul 25 2014
Enphase Energy, Inc. today announced that Energy France Installation (EFI), a solar installer based in the Rhone-Alps Region that specializes in photovoltaic installations for residential and small commercial projects, has won a project with AST Groupe to install 1,500 PV systems, each equipped with the Enphase®System, on newly constructed single-family homes.
The two-year project will include more than 500 array installations in 2014, and about 1,000 in 2015, totaling more than 1,500 PV systems with expected installed power of 750 kWp.
The new homes will comply with the current French thermal regulation (RT2012), which imposes a maximum limit on the primary energy consumption to new buildings for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, hot water production and lighting. The maximum value set by RT2012 is 50 kWhEP / m² / year, on average.
“When looking for smart solutions to meet the current French thermal regulation for new buildings, we determined solar PV to be the best option for this project,” said Sylvain Tur, deputy managing director at AST Groupe. “The advanced solar technology from Enphase not only gives our customers the ability to save on energy bills, it also paves the way for the upcoming RT2020 thermal regulation where energy production from renewables becomes a systematic requirement of any new building.”
AST Groupe is an industry leader specializing in building residential communities, multifamily projects and custom homes. The company, which is among the top actors in the French single-family house segment, has constructed tens of thousands of homes in the country since its establishment in 1993, and more than 2,000 in 2013.
“We are very proud for the tremendous value of this partnership, which is accelerating smarter solar adoption among French homeowners,” states Olivier Jacques, managing director of EMEA, Enphase Energy. “Enphase offers AST an advanced PV solution that generates financial and environmental benefits to their customers. Moreover, as it comes included as a standard feature with the purchase of the house, it can conceivably improve the real-estate resale potential.”
The recent collaboration between AST and EFI has already brought the Enphase networked solar PV to more than 100 new single-family homes. The Enphase Technology supplies standard three or four-bedroom houses with right-sized, intelligent solar arrays. With an average of two PV modules per home, each dwelling can consume the energy it produces for its own needs and save up to 30 percent of energy costs.
“We have years of experience in solar PV with hundreds of installations in the field,” said Tarik Ninach, president of EFI. “When competing for a large installation project quality, flexibility, ease of installation, operations and maintenance are essential parameters to be considered. The Enphase Microinverter System stood out and represented the only viable solution to win the business. EFI and Enphase together are very well-positioned to address self-consumption PV market dynamics.”