France is at risk of blackouts this winter because a dozen nuclear reactors are off the grid. It’s going to need imports from countries including Germany, which has abundant supplies thanks to its heavy investment in green energy.
It was a cold November evening but on France’s electricity market, things were heating up. On November 14 between 6 and 7 p.m, within just a few minutes the wholesale price of electricity jumped to €829.79, or $874.31, per megawatt hour.
At the same time across the border in Germany, the same amount of electricity was changing hands for just under €47 — and even that was a lot. So power in France was 17 times more expensive than in Germany.
That Monday evening had started pretty normally. Like on every working day, millions of people came back from the office and turned on their heating, and around a third of French homes are heated by electricity.
It was a cold evening, and power consumption surged by several gigawatts in just one hour. This high demand coincided with a supply shortage because a dozen nuclear power plants have been taken off the grid for several months for safety checks. And then, to make matters worse, wind power output that day was less than power companies had expected.
Suddenly they found themselves barely able to meet demand and had to fire up their most expensive reserves, including old and inefficient oil-fired power plants.
Luckily, the grid remained stable and the shortage had little impact beyond the price surge. But it may well happen again this winter. French grid operator RTE is preparing for a huge supply shortfall in December, January and February when the weather will likely be constantly cold, and power demand constantly high.
But Germany could help France get through the winter. Germany of all countries, criticized so often by the French because its green energy revolution has triggered a huge expansion in renewable power generation in recent years, regularly putting strains on the French grid.
“We’ve often been criticized in recent years for exporting wind and solar power abroad ... Now Europe can be happy that we can do that.”
Gero Lücking,, Lichtblick power provider
However, thanks to its abundance of wind and solar plants, Germany has what France would dearly like right now — ample electricity.
“We’ve often been criticized in recent years for exporting wind and solar power abroad,” said Gero Lücking, managing director of renewable power provider Lichtblick in Hamburg. “The Poles and the French regularly complained. Now Europe can be happy that we can do that.”
French nuclear safety regulator ASN ordered state-controlled utility EDF to carry out urgent safety checks on 18 of its 58 reactors. At present, 12 reactors are still off the grid and will remain shut in December — and even in January and February, nine reactors will still be out of action. ASN is checking for suspected flaws in pressurized water reactors supplied by state-owned reactor builder Areva after the discovery of weak spots in the steel of a reactor that EDF is building in Flamanville in northwest France.
EDF will be able to make up some of the shortfall by firing up modern gas-fired power plants. But that won’t cover the whole supply gap.
Franck Chevet, the head of regulator ASN, said the situation of the French nuclear sector — which usually covers three quarters of French power needs — was “very worrying.” France must be prepared to be able to do without five to 10 reactors at any time, he told newspaper Le Figaro.
Market prices reflect how serious the problem is. The forward price of a megawatt hour of power to be delivered in January currently costs €117 — up from €35 in January 2016.
In January, the interconnectors linking the French grid to Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and Britain will be will be running hot. The French can import a total of 12.2 gigawatts from six countries — equivalent to the output of 10 large nuclear power plants.
Germany can mobilize enough capacity to help out. Since 2000, when the renewable energy law was launched to subsidize green power, so many wind turbines and solar plants have been installed that coal and gas-fired plants are often sitting idle.
When weather conditions are favorable — meaning windy and sunny — Germany produces far more power than it consumes and exports it to other countries. Its neighbors regularly complain that they have to compensate for these German output peaks and struggle to keep their grids stable.
Mr. Lücking, the head of German supplier Lichtblick, said France’s current shortfall shows the disadvantages of being so dependent on one energy source. “It was far-sighted of us to diversify our power production and invest in renewable energy early on,” he said. “Despite all the problems we’re having with the energy revolution, there’s no danger that we’ll run short of power.”
German solar plants won’t provide much electricity over the winter, but strong winds during the season will ensure that renewable energy will remain a big part of the energy mix in the coming months, said analysts.
Last week renewables had a 40 percent share of German power output thanks to wind power. Nevertheless, German exports won’t be enough to avert blackouts in France. The country will have to import power from all its neighbors. In the last really cold French winter in 2012, Brittany in northwest France and the Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur region in the south suffered power cuts.
To make sure that doesn’t happen this winter, the grid operator is considering three measures that France has never resorted to before.
The first is to issue an alert to consumers to rapidly cut their consumption by turning down the heating, using their computers less and switching off washing machines and even the lights.