EDF announced on Friday the overnight return to service of two additional nuclear reactors, allowing the French power grid to operate with 40 connected reactors out of 56, on the eve of an announced drop in temperatures.
EDF data shows that the Bugey 3 reactors near Grenoble and Dampierre 3 in Loiret were restarted, knowing that Cattenom 4 in Lorraine had resumed electricity production on Wednesday night. According to EDF, the 40 connected reactors bring the available power to 39 gigawatts (GW). The French nuclear park has a maximum installed capacity of more than 61 GW.
France is this year, for the first time in 42 years, a net importer of electricity because the level of nuclear electricity production is at its lowest level, due to scheduled but sometimes prolonged maintenance, or corrosion problems that have required lengthy repairs.
Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire travels on Friday with new EDF chief executive Luc Rémont to the Penly power station in Normandy, whose reactors are closed and due to restart in early 2023.
Two-hour scheduled rotating blackouts
While not inevitable, scheduled blackouts of up to two hours in winter could occur if calls to reduce power consumption are not sufficiently adhered to.
An EcoWatt signaling system has been enabled to notify consumers in advance, with three levels: green if everything is going well, orange when the system is tense and red when the alert level is at its maximum and it is necessary to redouble efforts to save energy , for example, not plugging in the oven, turning off the heating, etc.
At the moment, the manager of the network of high and very high voltage lines RTE has observed a drop in electricity consumption despite the cold: – 8.3% in one week compared to the average for the 2014-2019 period. EDF, for its part, estimates the drop at -10% in November, compared to November 2021.
RTE and the electricity distributor Enedis are also organizing a national exercise this Friday, in which the prefectures participate, to test their procedures and modes of communication in the event of load shedding, with simulations of various computer scenarios. This is by no means a population cutoff test.
Source: BFM TV
