“We expect a peak this week to occur on Wednesday morning with around 83 gigawatts, which will be covered by French power generation,” Arnaud Mazingue, chief operating officer of French power grid operator RTE, told BFM television.
Unless temperatures are much lower than expected and there is less wind than expected to run the wind turbines, France will be in balance, charging or exporting electric power with neighboring countries.
This is another situation from last winter, when France’s vegetable fuel source was reduced due to the war in Ukraine and several nuclear reactors were shut down for maintenance. More than a fraction of France’s electricity comes from nuclear power.
Faced with the option of power outages, France imported an unprecedented amount of electrical power (16. 5 terawatt hours) last winter and restarted a coal-fired power plant to meet customer needs.
This year, France will have “extraordinarily limited” desires for coal, Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told FranceInfo radio on Monday.
“Everything will be fine, we have a lot of electricity,” he said, adding that France exported a record amount in December 2023.
France’s electric power generation capacity is superior for several reasons, adding more source and decreasing demand.
Last year, 20 of the country’s 56 nuclear reactors were out of service to repair corroded cooling systems.
Today, 10 of them are back in service, and RTE estimates that total capacity could reach just 50 gigawatts by January, an increase of 6 gigawatts through January 2023.
Hydropower, which accounted for 11% of French electricity production in 2022, is also stronger, with water tables higher than last winter after two years of drought.
The capacity of the water tanks is “higher than the old averages”, says RTE.
France has also continued to expand its wind and solar installations, with the Saint-Brieuc and Fécamp offshore wind plants expected to come online this winter, in addition to those in Saint-Nazaire, which have been in operation since 2022.
Electricity consumption in France has also declined over the past year, after the government encouraged families and businesses to reduce their electricity consumption by 10% and put an energy-saving plan in place.
RTE had recorded a structural relief of 7. 5 to 8 percent in its electricity consumption over the past year.
“The habit of the French has changed enormously, and not only during last winter, but also in 2023,” Mazingue said.
Referring to an October 2023 report, Pannier-Runacher said energy consumption decreased by 12% compared to 2014-2019, the era before the Covid pandemic.
“Overall, we have reduced our consumption of fuel and electricity,” he said, stressing that this has allowed France to be “very alert when cold attacks come. “
However, citizens keep the thermostat at 19 degrees Celsius, as advised by the energy transition company Ademe.