Power outages: what is the application that allows you to monitor the state of the network this winter?

The threat of Power cuts continues to hover over households for this winter, but the French are trying to adapt. And in order to avoid any unpleasant surprises, many people have rushed to certain tools to monitor electricity consumption in France. And the one that currently meets with the most success is EcoWattan application published by RTE (Electricity transport network, the French network operator) and which allows you to follow the evolution of the state of the national electricity network.

“We had 300,000 downloads this week. We were at 700,000 downloads on Sunday evening, that doubled in a few days“, said Xavier Piechaczyk, chairman of the management board of RTE, guest of France Inter this Monday, December 5.

Three color codes to find your way around

Set up by the authorities to anticipate power cuts, EcoWatt is a alert system that informs three days in advance of the state of electricity consumption and production. Three color codes have been created to guide users: green (normal consumption), orange (tight electrical system, eco-gestures are welcome) and finally red (very tense electrical system. Inevitable cuts if we do not lower our consumption). With these indications, EcoWatt hopes to encourage the French to adopt the right gestures to allow everyone to be supplied with electricity. “He’s a Clever Bison of electricity. If it’s orange, we don’t have any more margin, if it’s red, shedding is not excluded, unless everyone organizes themselves so that on D-day, at the right time, we save energy“, explained Xavier Piechaczyk, who specifies that it is not asked “to cut everything, nor to companies to stop. The effort is based on lighting, on cooking, also, in the evening”

For consumers who have downloaded the application, notifications are automatically sent when the network switches to red, and on the day of possible cuts, to specify the procedure to follow in order to avoid them.