A few weeks ago, the government made a controversial request to the electricity distribution managers: the automatic switching off of the hot water tank contact during certain hours. Despite everything, the measure was implemented and, a month later, the results are very positive.
The purpose of the operation was to temporarily cut off the power supply to the water heaters of certain households, among the 4.3 million in France who were equipped with a controllable contact on their cumulus and had an off-peak/peak hour contract at their energy supplier. These cuts took place between 12 and 2 p.m., during the peak of consumption.
2.4 gigawatts of savings, “a great success“according to Enedis
Thierry Sudret, operations and systems manager at Enedis, took stock of the operation by answering questions from Francebleu.fr. The objective set at the start was to save 2.5 gigawatts of electricity, and it has almost been achieved: the measure would have finally enabled a saving of 2.4 gigawatts. A figure higher than the consumption of a city like Paris and which is equivalent to that of 2.4 million French people.
Another important detail, this shift in the load of the water tanks from the meridian hours period to the night hours does not seem to have impacted the households. In the words of the manager, “we haven’t had any complaints, everything is going smoothly so it’s a great success”.
As we explained in our detailed article, the non-activation of the controllable contact does not prevent the use of hot water heated the previous night. On the other hand, in the event of higher than normal consumption, or in the event of doubt, the customer retains the possibility of manually switching on the contact for additional heating, still benefiting from the off-peak tariff.