“We are not relieved.” Jean-Paul Roubin, executive director of Customers and Operation of the RTE electrical system, wanted to measure himself this Thursday, insisting that it is not guaranteed that this measure of last resort will be applied during the winter in the event of a voltage spike. in the electrical network.
The manager of the electricity transmission network organized a presentation of the different safeguard measures in the event of tension in the electricity system, together with the supplier Enedis.
If Jean-Paul Roubin confirms the latest forecasts presented by RTE last week -which do not foresee difficulties neither for the second half of October nor for the first half of November-, he remains vigilant beyond that.
On the other hand, several uncertainties still prevent a clear vision of the winter situation, such as gas supply, the energy situation of neighboring countries, the evolution of consumption or even the rate of restart of nuclear reactors. But in the vast majority of situations, few EcoWatt red signals are expected during the six winter months. Above all, RTE reaffirms its assumption that France would not risk a “blackout”.
Several options before arriving at load shedding
First of all, there is the famous EcoWatt device, nicknamed “the weather forecast of electricity”, and which should encourage people to take ecological actions to obtain a reduction of consumption of 1 to 5% in case of daylight. red, colors synonymous with tension. This is the quantified objective that makes it possible to avoid the risk of shedding and load cuts in the central scenario, but the threshold rises to 15% in the most extreme scenario. As a reminder, EcoWatt announces colors three days in advance.
Specifically, it will try to relieve the network during the consumption peaks identified in the time slots from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Risk situations would not affect entire days, weekends or holidays. Since October 15, an example of a device illustrates the change in consumption that is encouraged among households in particular. This is the heating of hot water tanks in off-peak hours for some 4.3 million private and professional customers who have contracted a peak/off-peak hour contract. Launched until April 15, this device saves the equivalent of 2.5 GW, which represents the annual consumption of the capital.
But industrial sites are equally targets that must be mobilized in this collective effort. The sites in question are 14 in France, a list that is kept confidential. However, the latter could save 1.2 GW on its own thanks to occasional outages limited to 10 in the year.
Finally, RTE can also decide to put everyone in the same boat by reducing the voltage on the distribution network by 5%, which would have the impact of reducing consumption by around 4%, that is, the equivalent of consumption in the cities of Paris and Toulouse. . This is a safeguard measure that can be activated in an emergency and that individual customers may feel dimly as it reduces the performance of certain electrical appliances.
Rotating cuts of two consecutive hours
Although there is no pre-established load shedding plan due to factors that are too fluctuating, this measure is well framed despite its unprecedented nature in France. “Scheduled load shedding has never been implemented on the French network, underlines Thierry Sudret, Director of Operations and Systems at Enedis. The only episode dates back to November 4, 2006 after an incident on a European scale that had cut for 5 million French households.”
Load shedding will be organized through cuts in 100MW consumption blocks distributed in the territory according to technical criteria and executed through the Enedis Regional Control Entities in the medium voltage network. “We received from RTE a load shedding request of 2 GW per 100 MW block knowing that one GW represents approximately one million customers”, explains Thierry Sudret. The interruption then lasts two consecutive hours, a duration specially designed to preserve the cold chain in the different stores, and which can lead to slight overflows around the high-voltage time slots.
Greater load shedding in urban areas
The load shedding will affect all sectors of France, but certain priority places determined by the departmental prefectures will be spared. “We will rotate the measure throughout the territory so as not to focus on the same regions if there are several periods of load shedding, insists Jean-Paul Roubin. There will be a rotation set in motion and this is not because a person lives in the Alps, where there are a lot of hydraulic production, it will not have load shedding”.
If the probable cuts will be confirmed the day before around 5:00 p.m., a map of the potentially affected departments will be displayed around 9:30 p.m. on the EcoWatt site and users will be able to consult their personal situation by entering their postal address. “By taking stock the day before, we will determine the areas to target for load shedding based on technical parameters,” specifies Jean-Paul Roubin. If we find that French consumption has fallen on the morning of D-Day, we will. send in order of load shedding or partially depending on the magnitude of the fall”.
However, the application of load shedding does not exempt behaviors in favor of sobriety. When you are worried about outages, some good gestures are recommended, such as avoiding taking the elevator, using portable devices or working on appliances. “It is also preferable to limit trips because we cannot rule out certain road lights being cut off,” recalls the RTE representative. Otherwise, it is still recommended to reduce consumption to limit the duration and importance of load shedding at the national level.
Source: BFM TV
