An “erroneous” sale of colossal quantities of electricity on the market to the company Électricité de Strasbourg (ÉS), an 89% subsidiary of EDF, caused the company to lose 60 million euros last week.

A "dysfunction", perhaps caused by human error, we learned Monday from the company and RTE.

The operator sold on the markets, in two installments, electricity that it did not have, and which it therefore had to buy back at a high price... forcing the electricity network manager to urgently request neighboring countries to avoid possible cuts.

Which in the end, she didn't have to do..

“As part of the recurring electricity supply activity of ÉS Énergies Strasbourg, a marketing subsidiary of the ÉS group, market transactions were erroneously issued in quantities of 2.03 GW and 5.75 GW respectively. GW […] on September 6 and 7,” Electricité de Strasbourg said in a press release dated Thursday, confirming information from the

Financial Times

.

"We operated on the markets in an erroneous way for orders for unusual quantities", explained Frédéric Thiry, director of communication at ÉS.

“Malfunction” or “human error”

According to the first elements of the internal investigation, “a malfunction of the information system” is at the origin of this incident detected on September 7, even if the company does not exclude either that a “human error is at the origin of a computer runaway".

The incident in any case forced the company to buy back electricity on the wholesale market at more than 500 euros per MWh, very high prices, due to the surge in energy prices.

According to RTE, these rebalancing and volume readjustment operations have thus avoided tensions on an already weakened electricity network, due to the unavailability of more than half of the French nuclear fleet.

But do not panic for the approximately 560,000 subscribers at the regulated rate supplied with electricity by ÉS, the company has indeed indicated that the malfunction would have "no consequences" for its customers, "both on their contract and on prices " .

In 2021, its net income amounted to 66.7 million euros.

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