The issue is now omnipresent in public debate as the mercury has dropped dramatically in recent days, marking the start of meteorological winter. France could experience power cuts in the middle of this winter period, especially from January 2023. For the moment, the use of the conditional is justified because it remains in the hypothesis stage and members of the executive and representatives of RTE and Enedis continue to insist on the fact that the country can completely escape these power outages.
However, these perspectives raise a question: what are the factors that have led France to this situation of potential tensions in its electrical network? BFM Business explores the different causes that explain the plausible recourse to what is presented as “safeguard means”.
- Why does France lack electricity?
Traditionally, power cuts occur regularly due to adverse weather conditions and more particularly to episodes of more or less intense cold. Despite a particularly mild autumn, France is not immune to a harsh winter like the one it experienced between 2010 and 2011. But for this winter of 2022-2023, it’s not just weather conditions that could cause power outages.
It is above all the electrical energy available in France that is not at its optimum level. And for good reason, EDF is long behind in its schedule for the relaunch of the nuclear fleet, a substantial part of which has been shut down for several months to deal with problems related to the phenomenon of stress corrosion cracking or in the context of simple maintenance. . Fifteen days before the winter solstice, 20 of the 56 infrastructures operated by the energy company are still closed and must be progressively restarted until the end of February. It is true that the strikes delayed work at the power plants during the month of October, but this work was also delayed regardless of the social movement. Result: the available power in January will not exceed 45 GW and should even be around 40 GW according to RTE.
Furthermore, if EDF can pride itself on having filled its gas stocks to technical maximum, the energy company took its time to do the same with its water tanks due to low rainfall. These prevent the dams from filling to more than two-thirds of their level, which could have been an additional lever on the supply of electrical power. However, in an energy context made more complex by the war in Ukraine, France will prefer to save its gas reserves for the coming winters, which could be much harsher due to the slowdown in Russian exports.
- How will the famous load shedding be organized?
RTE persists and signs: no risk of blackout is on France’s agenda, as occurred on December 19, 1978 when there was a total loss of control of the electrical system in a large part of the metropolitan territory. This time, the power cuts will be controlled by RTE together with the energy provider Enedis. These would be backup means intended to relieve the electrical network at times of greater tension.
Households will have clues about the possibility of being affected by cuts since the red Ecowatt signs will be indicated three days in advance with confirmation the day before around 5:00 p.m. The Ecowatt site will display a map of the potentially affected departments around 9:30 p.m. and users will be able to enter their postal address to check their personal situation.
Load shedding will be concentrated in the time slots corresponding to consumption peaks, that is, between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., and will not spare any geographical area. None, with the exception of a few priority sites listed by the departmental prefectures and which, by extension, will allow 40% of the French to escape the load detachment. In addition, they should last about two hours with, however, the risk of slight overflows.
- How to escape the cuts?
Load shedding may seem inevitable based on the combined negative signals from the power supply and the sudden drop in temperatures. In reality, load shedding is only a last resort and RTE has repeatedly reaffirmed its ambition not to go there. In the current state, the central scenario of the operator of the electricity transmission network does not foresee more than six red signals from Ecovatios during the winter, which could lead to load shedding.
Several bills will influence the number of activation of Ecowatt red signals and the use of power cuts. First, the tensions over gas that France is trying to defuse by importing liquefied natural gas in particular. Other imports that may be decisive: those of electricity. In this sense, RTE mentioned the proper functioning of the interconnections, particularly at the Belgian and German borders where the works and exceptional measures will increase the import potential for the rest of the winter. One piece of data is evocative in this sense: the net balance of electricity exchanges has just returned to green for the first time since last May.
But the factor on which both the members of the executive and the different representatives of French energy insist on avoiding load shedding measures is, above all, energy sobriety. According to RTE, a drop in consumption from 1 to 5% would avoid the risk of a cut in the central scenario, while this reduction would have to be pushed to 15% in the most extreme scenario.
- Has consumption dropped enough?
The operator of the electricity transmission network is already seeing a drop in consumption that seems encouraging. Between the beginning of October and mid-November, consumption fell between 5 and 7% compared to the average observed in the period 2014-2019. “This reduction is of a structural nature, recalls RTE in its latest monthly report. result not meteorological effects, which are reaffirmed in all the analyses”.
This decrease in consumption, which for the moment is difficult to attribute to any concrete effort at sobriety, is unevenly supported by the different actors. On the one hand, the secondary sector is contributing strongly, since the consumption of the large industrial estates fell between 11 and 13% in these six weeks due to the rise in energy prices that forced them to significantly reduce or even stop its activity. The residential sector also participates, but to a much lesser extent, with a reduction of around 1% in its electricity consumption.
On the other hand, the tertiary sector still seems to lag behind in this area. Now that the heart of the winter period is imminent, companies appear as a symbol of the desired reinforcement of sobriety efforts in all sectors of society. “Businesses must mobilize, urged Xavier Piechaczyk, chairman of RTE’s board of directors, on the set of France Info last week. They can switch to LED lighting, heat less and have buildings turned off when empty.”
Source: BFM TV
