The director of the Electricity Transmission Network (RTE), the transmission manager in France, tried to reassure on BFMTV this Thursday evening. The end of the year will not be affected by power cuts…
The parties should run smoothly on the power grid. While speculation on the electricity shortage in France this winter is rife and government communication on possible load shedding has been worrying for more than a week, the director of the Electricity Transmission Network (RTE), the manager of the transport of electricity in France, tried to reassure on BFMTV this Thursday evening.
According to Jean-Paul Roubin, “we cannot fear a power cut before the end of the year”. With temperatures dropping drastically this weekend, an orange EcoWatt signal, synonymous with tension on the power grid, could be triggered on Monday. But it should therefore be inconsequential.
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The month of January 2023 remains uncertain. “At the beginning of next year, we must not panic […]. We are carrying out a certain number of scenarios which are hypotheses on which we are working”, was satisfied to answer Jean-Paul Roubin, who was delighted with the drop in electricity consumption in France in recent weeks.
Macron annoyed by panic over power cuts
Electricity transmission network (RTE) has indeed published encouraging data on Tuesday evening. According to weekly summary of the EDF subsidiary, the French reduced their consumption by 8.3% last week compared to the average for previous years. An increased drop which brings the savings to 6.6% over the last four weeks and makes it possible to approach a little more the objective of -10% established by Emmanuel Macron at the start of the school year during the presentation of the energy sobriety plan . An objective supposed to reduce the bill of the French but also to help the country to pass the winter in full failure of the system of production of electricity.
“We are going to hold out this winter,” Emmanuel Macron himself echoed this Tuesday, on the sidelines of an EU-Balkans summit organized in Albania. Annoyed by the cacophony of the government and operators for a week according to the confidences of France Info and of BFM TV, the head of state had already tried to signal the end of the game last weekend, during an interview with TF1 from the United States, calling on the French not to panic. This time, he openly points to “the scenarios of fear” and an “absurd debate” born of the circular sent by Elisabeth Borne to the prefects to organize any power cuts scheduled for this winter to avoid the blackout.
For the moment, the electrical system is holding up, even if France is obliged to import tens of thousands of megawatts of electricity from abroad every day. This Thursday, December 8, for example, France had already consumed more than one million MW at 3:45 p.m. (peak recorded at 12:00 p.m. at 73,845 MWh). A figure higher than production, which amounted to 877,090 MW at the same time, a difference of almost 200,000 MW that had to be made up by going to get electricity from our neighbours. Over the past five years, on December 8, France was, on the other hand, an exporter of 13,438 MW on average.