The health crisis linked to Covid-19 could have impacts on the electricity supply next winter.
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Black out?
The hypothesis of power outages is being considered by the electricity network manager but appears unlikely: the re-containment should reduce consumption while a good number of nuclear reactors have been put back into operation.
"The continuity of electricity supply for the months of December 2020, January and February 2021 is not secure and will depend only on climatic conditions," alerted this week the central Social and Economic Committee (CSE) of EDF.
"Impossible to ensure the balance of the electricity network"
"Faced with a policy which reduces the means of production of controllable electricity, it will be impossible in the event of a period of cold (simply comparable to winters 2018 and 2012) to ensure the balance of the electricity network", he judges .
The targeted policy is in particular the reduction of the nuclear share in the production of electricity, which led to the closure of the two reactors of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant this year, which the unions did not digest.
France is also committed to shutting down its highly polluting coal plants by 2022, a milestone that has been confirmed by the government.
However, the country used it this year in September, due to less availability of nuclear power but also a high pressure reducing wind production.
"Margins"
For this winter, the RTE network manager has long warned that “vigilance” would be required.
At issue: the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted the maintenance schedule for nuclear reactors in the spring.
RTE warned that the winter season would be marked in particular by "a probability of high tension at the end of November - beginning of December in the event of early cold".
But the re-containment has probably changed the picture.
There is a priori "less consumption on the network" even if "the exact effect is still little known", notes Nicolas Goldberg, of the firm Colombus Consulting.
"If French consumption drops tomorrow, it creates margins," noted Xavier Piechaczyk, president of RTE in October, who will update its models during the month of November.
During the spring lockdown, electricity consumption had fallen by as much as 15-20%, reflecting the sharp slowdown in economic activity.
On the production side, EDF said in October "relatively confident" in its ability to produce enough electricity this winter.
The group hopes to approach 42 or 43 nuclear reactors in operation in November, out of the 56 in the park.
An objective still in place despite the postponement of the return to service of the two reactors at the Flamanville plant (Manche), one of which is only due to restart at the end of January.
"We are currently at 41 reactors connected to the electricity network," said one Friday at EDF.
No alarmism
However, measures are still being considered in the event of an imbalance between electricity supply and demand.
Some are painless, such as a slight reduction in the voltage on the network, which for example would make the bulbs shine a little less brightly.
RTE also has mechanisms that allow it to reduce consumption to 3 gigawatts (GW), the equivalent of three nuclear reactors.
On the one hand, there is a so-called “cut-off” mechanism, which has been doubled, in the form of contracts signed by invitation to tender with companies or individuals who temporarily agree to reduce or postpone some of their consumption.
Another so-called “interruptibility” device also makes it possible to immediately stop the supply of current to 18 sites of large electricity consumers under contract with RTE.
As a last resort, it is finally planned to resort to "load shedding", that is to say to organized and rotating cuts of the electricity supply of about 200,000 homes at a time for 2 hours.
An extreme measure but intended to avoid the blackout - a widespread and uncontrolled failure.
“There will be no load shedding this winter,” bets Nicolas Goldberg for his part.
"We are in a period of under-consumption, nuclear power has recovered, demand response has responded to an exceptional call for tenders launched this summer", he summarizes.
"We are vigilant but not alarmist either," says one also in the entourage of the Minister of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili.
"We took all possible arrangements," according to this source.
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