FRANCE: RTE REMAINS VIGILANT ON ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
PARIS (Reuters) – RTE, the operator of the French high-voltage electricity network, announced on Friday that it was maintaining its vigilance diagnosis for the end of winter in a context of a “degraded” situation of the production fleet, while judging favorable the short term weather forecast.
It had raised its level of vigilance at the end of December, in particular because of the unavailability of many nuclear reactors operated by EDF.
In a new point on the outlook for the balance between supply and demand, it notes that the supply of electricity has so far been ensured without recourse to exceptional means despite the low production of the wind farm and an availability of the “historically low” nuclear fleet for this period of the year.
He estimates that a “severe” weather episode is unlikely for at least the beginning of February and until the end of winter with a higher degree of uncertainty.
Regarding the prolonged shutdown of five nuclear reactors linked to a problem of corrosion on safety circuits, he considers that “these extensions do not call into question the diagnosis established by RTE for the end of winter”.
However, the ongoing control of these faults in the rest of the nuclear fleet “is likely to have consequences in terms of security of electricity supply beyond this winter”, continues RTE.
(Report Forrest Crelin, written by Marc Angrand, edited by Matthieu Protard)