Truck to transport concrete, digger to break rock: still in full construction, the future mini hydroelectric power station of Saint-Junien (Haute-Vienne) is nevertheless supposed to enter service quickly. Ideally, by December 2023, after a year of work, hopes its client. Philippe Herbrecht already operates a first dam of this type in the town and another in Saint-Brice-sur-Vienne, not far from there.
“‘Dam’, for some, it’s a dirty word, it’s scary, it makes you think of huge installations”, the fifty-year-old corrects himself. SO, “it is better to say ‘threshold’ or ‘lock'”he adds, wearing boots, in front of this 1.90 meter waterfall which once used a wheat mill, then a paper mill. In a previous life, this Alsatian ran an electricity company. This was before acquiring its first power plant on the banks of the Vienne, in 2013, then moving with wife and children to Limousin. Especially for getting started in hydraulics.
Admittedly, margins of development exist in the country. But they promise to be thin, compared to those of wind and solar. Hydroelectricity is already a mature renewable energy, developed in the 1940s, then, above all, between the 1950s and 1970s. “The hydraulic production potential in France is today considered as already largely exploited and presents few additional opportunities in the long term”judges the national operator of the electricity transmission network, RTE, in his report “Energy Futures 2050”, presented in October 2021. Despite a year of severe drought, in 2022, hydroelectricity still finished in second place in electricity production (11%). Far behind nuclear power (63%). But ahead of wind (9%) and solar (4%).
Produce the equivalent of a nuclear reactor in 2028
The objective of the public authorities is to increase hydroelectric capacities to increase them to at least 26.4 gigawatts of power in 2028, against 25.3 in 2016. That is approximately the equivalent of an additional nuclear reactor. France Hydro Electricity expects the next multiannual energy program to raise the cap even further, to set it at 27.1 in 2033. Either by optimizing existing installations, or “with the development of new works”according to Xavier Casiot, president of the professional organization.
In Saint-Junien, the future power station will supply 530 households, according to those responsible for the project. Not negligible, knowing that about 11,000 inhabitants live in this city whose street names (Karl-Marx), square (Lenin) or suburb (Liebknecht) recall the communist tradition.
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