EDF announced on Friday that three additional nuclear reactors will be restarted overnight, allowing the French electricity network to run with 40 reactors connected out of 56, on the eve of a predicted drop in temperatures.
“40 reactors are connected to the network this morning,” told AFP the management of EDF, which has as customers about 70% of French households and 55 to 60% of businesses.
EDF data show that the Bugey 3 reactor near Grenoble and the Dampierre 3 reactor in the Loiret region have restarted, and Cattenom 4 in Lorraine has also resumed electricity production. According to EDF, the 40 connected reactors bring the available power to 39 gigawatts (GW) for a maximum installed power of more than 61 GW.
This year, for the first time in 42 years, France is a net importer of electricity because the level of nuclear power production is at its lowest, due to scheduled but sometimes prolonged maintenance, or corrosion problems that have required lengthy repairs.
The Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire is on a trip Friday with the new CEO of EDF, Luc Rémont, to the Penly power plant in Normandy whose reactors are shut down and should restart in early 2023.
Although not inevitable, scheduled rolling blackouts of up to two hours could occur during the winter if calls to reduce electricity consumption are not sufficiently heeded. A system of EcoWatt signals has been put in place to warn consumers in advance, with three levels: green when everything is fine, orange when the system is under stress and red when the alert level is at its highest and efforts must be redoubled to save energy, for example, not plugging in your oven, turning off your heating, etc.
For the time being, the manager of the high and very high voltage network RTE observes a decrease in electricity consumption despite the cold weather:
– 8.3% over a week compared to the 2014-2019 average. EDF, for its part, estimates the decline at -10% in November, compared to November 2021. RTE and the electricity distributor Enedis are also organizing a national exercise this Friday, involving the prefectures, to test their procedures and communication methods in the event of load shedding, with simulations of several scenarios on computer. This is in no way a test of cuts on the population.
