Infrastructure

Installed capacity — France

What France could produce with everything running at once: installed capacity by source, as reported for 2026, next to how much has actually run.

Installed capacity
163,611MW
reported for 2026
Renewables
46.1%
75,430 of 163,611 MW
Largest source
Nuclear
62,990 MW · 38.5% of total
Against 2025
+6,916MW
4.4% against the previous year

The generation fleet, 2026

Installed capacity by source, as the operator reports it.

Installed capacity 163,611MW reported for 2026 Cleaner energy for tomorrow
Renewables 46.1% 75,430 MW
Largest source Nuclear 38.5%
Against 2025 +6,916 MW
Source Capacity (MW) Of total
Nuclear 62,990 38.5%
Solar 28,254+5,394 17.3%
Onshore wind 23,672+765 14.5%
Natural gas 12,801+13 7.8%
Run-of-river hydro 11,748+11 7.2%
Hydro reservoir 8,791 5.4%
Pumped-storage hydro 5,061 3.1%
Oil 2,986+7 1.8%
Hard coal 1,811 1.1%
Offshore wind 1,528+500 0.9%
Other sources 1,492+226 0.9%
Biomass 1,435+22 0.9%
Waste 1,040−23 0.6%
Geothermal 2 0.0%

How much ran at once

The highest output delivered at a single moment over the past twelve months, by source group, next to the installed capacity.

Of 163,611 MW installed, the most that ever ran at one moment was 91,269 MW — 56% of the fleet, on 08/01/2026, 18:45:00.

The peak is read from our own generation archive, not estimated: it is a lower bound on what the fleet can do. A small ratio means the group's sources never all ran together — reservoir hydro starts at peak demand, thermal plants sit idle when they are not called. A ratio above one hundred means the declared capacity has fallen behind: the figure is declared at the start of the year while new units come online during it. Groups are compared here rather than individual source types: the same source can report capacity under lignite and generation under coal, and at group level the two meet.

How it changed, year by year

Total installed capacity, from 2025 to 2026.

  1. 2026 163,611MW +6,916
  2. 2025 156,695MW

The figures come from the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform: installed generation capacity by production type. The year is the one the operator reports for, not the year the figure was published.

Two things are not here: the number of installations per source, and batteries as a source of their own. The aggregated report does not carry them, and batteries fall under “other”. They appear the day the source publishes them separately.