Louise Douillet 9:54 p.m., September 11, 2022

The town hall of Paris is considering switching off the lights of the Eiffel Tower an hour earlier than the usual time.

The municipality wants to show goodwill by saving energy, and thus lead by example.

But is it really efficient to turn off the most famous monument in Paris at 11:45 p.m. rather than at 1 a.m.? 

The Eiffel Tower could soon shine a little less.

Indeed, the town hall of Paris wants to extinguish these illuminations earlier.

It is currently lit until 1 a.m., but this could change to 11:45 p.m. - the time the last visitor leaves.

An eminently symbolic decision. 

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The objective is above all to set an example, as shown by the figures: nocturnal illumination represents only 4% of the tower's annual consumption.

To illuminate it, you have on the one hand 336 projectors which offer this golden lighting to the Iron Lady.

By switching them off every day 1h15 earlier, we save almost 92,000 kW per year, which is barely the average electricity consumption of 40 individuals each year.

But is this the right solution?

On the other hand, there is the flicker which is activated every hour for five minutes.

So if the last one is at 11 p.m. rather than 1 a.m., we save two flickers every day, but we achieve very, very little energy savings: it is provided by 20,000 LED lamps which only consume 8800 kW per year, the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption of a 30 m2 studio occupied by two people.

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To save more, it would have been better to start lighting later and stop it after midnight.

"We consume more during the day," said Lamis Al-jounaidi, an energy economist.

"The maximum we consume is around 7 p.m., 8 p.m. when we are in Paris. We always have nuclear power running, except that at 7 p.m. we don't have enough and at midnight we may have be a little more than our needs."

Lamis Al-jounaidi invites the French to collectively delay their electricity consumption.