REPORTING. “A financial resilience project”: in Loir-et-Cher, the army is transforming a munitions storage site into a photovoltaic park

In Salbris, in Loir-et-Cher, the army plans to transform a munitions storage site into a photovoltaic park. This project should allow the army to benefit from carbon-free electricity, at a fixed price, in the long term.

When you enter this military base, you have the impression of going back in time: the vegetation has regained its rights and deer even appear between the hangars. “The first buildings we saw were for storing small munitions“, relates Mathieu Morlay, project manager at the Ministry of the Armed Forces. “There we enter the area where large munitions were stored“, he continues.

He continues the visit: “In this building, the walls are approximately one meter thick in reinforced concrete. Naturally, a building like that is very difficult to reuse at the moment and represents a challenge, because to deconstruct a building whose walls are one meter in reinforced concrete, we are not in a classic situation!“, explains Mathieu Morlay.

These hangars are too expensive to dismantle. As for the land, it is difficult to dig foundations there, since it was bombed during the Second World War and could therefore contain shells.

To convert this site, the Ministry of the Armed Forces therefore chose the option of solar panels from the company UrbaSolar. “What we decided to choose as a constructive method is what we call sillsdetails Patrick Chardin, the vice-president of the company. These are pads on which we will put structures.”

“We don’t dig into the ground, so that allows us to equip certain sites where there might be a risk of finding shells.”

Patrick Chardin, vice-président d’UrbaSolar

à franceinfo

From 2028, 60,000 panels will be installed and the commissioning of this solar power plant is planned for 2030. Enough to produce the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption of more than 20,000 people. But this electricity will be sold directly to the army at a fixed price, to power its installations across the country.

This is a way to secure your energy supply. “We saw in particular during the crisis, in 2022, or during periods when nuclear power was not entirely available in France, that electricity prices increased significantly.“, notes Mathieu Morlay. For him, this initiative therefore allows “stabilize 4% of our annual electricity purchases at a known and fixed price for 30 years. This is why this project is truly a financial resilience project.“

This direct electricity sales contract is a first for the State. It illustrates, according to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the capacity of former military sites to become levers of energy sovereignty.