ENTSO-E, the European Network of Electricity Transmission System Operators, says in a report that other countries are at risk of power cuts this winter.
Power cuts have caused a lot of talk this week, to the point that Emmanuel Macron felt compelled to call for calm in the face of what he perceives as an unjustified panic. However, the question is on everyone’s mind, since power cuts could also affect several other European countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Malta and Cyprus.
Wind, gas and nuclear could be a problem
The ENTSO-E report uses the LOLE index (Loss of Load Expectation or expected pressure drop) for the “normal” winter scenario in order to identify the countries at risk. The index is expressed in number of hours during which the current will then be cut and there are three risk areas outside of France.
The first is the Irish island, with 14.56 hours cut off for Ireland and 1.46 hours for Northern Ireland. The second is in the Scandinavian region with the two regions of southern Sweden, respectively risking 1.29 and 0.26 hours of outage, as well as Finland (0.16 hours). Finally, Cyprus (0.4 hours) and Malta (0.78 hours) are also cited.
Ireland would therefore be the most affected area. ” The system is expected to go into alert status at times, most likely during periods of low wind and low interconnection imports », Explains the forecast report of EirGrid,
the public electricity transmission operator in Ireland
Quoted by Release. Sweden and Finland have to deal with gas supply difficulties, as well as the problems encountered by the Ringhals nuclear power plant and the Olkiluto 3 EPR. Finally, the potential electricity problems of Cyprus could be caused by its geographical distance.
France, the first country most at risk of the old continent
If several nations of the continent will undoubtedly have to face tensions on their network, one of the major information of this report is that the country most in difficulty clearly remains France. Using the LOLE index used above, France risks, in a normal scenario, not being able to meet the country’s overall demand for 20.43 hours.
A worrying gold medal due to the unprecedented unavailability of part of the national nuclear reactor fleet. France thus recorded during the first 11 months of the year a negative balance of 14.5 terawatt hours of electricity in its exchanges with bordering countries, whereas it was strongly in profit throughout this century.
Source : Release
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