“Most of the risks relating to the security of electricity supply for this winter have now been ruled out,” underlines the manager of the electricity network.
If it is still too early to definitively claim victory, the hardest part seems to be over for the tricolor electrical system. While RTE warned last September of an “increased voltage risk” this winter, the electricity transmission network manager now considers that it is “largely ruled out“, confirming the diagnosis of the last months. “Most of the risks relating to the security of electricity supply for this winter have now been ruled out“, Can we read in the latest update of the analysis of the passage of winter from RTE, published this Friday.
Thus, the manager announces to lower by “AVERAGE” To “weak» the risk of tensions on the electrical network for the rest of the winter. “This means that the probability of signal activation “Ecowatt red” is very limited even if it cannot be excluded in the event of intense cold and major production hazards“, specifies RTE. In other words, the risk of targeted power cuts this winter seems to be definitely receding.
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The electrical manager attributes this positive development to several factors. On the one hand, the rather mild temperatures and the absence of a cold snap for several weeks. On the other hand, improvements in the situation of the supply-demand balance “have been confirmed” these last weeks. On the consumer side,the efforts energy saving maintained a high level– about -9% consumption over the last four weeks compared to the average for the 2014-2019 period. They translate, continues RTE, “a national mobilization in favor of energy savings which does not run out of steam, although it remains difficult to distinguish in this movement the respective shares of economic constraint and sobriety chosen“.
Winter 2023-2024 “less risky”
On the production side,there availability of the nuclear fleet reached its highest level of the winter, slightly above 45 GW” at the beginning of February. Moreover, “electricity exchanges between France and its neighbors functioned correctly“, notes RTE. These positive developments come on top of weather forecasts that do not predict between now and mid-March “cold spell intense enough to create a risk of imbalanceon the electrical network. For the rest, that is to say the end of winter and the beginning of spring, “even in very particular weather conditions (…), the balance between supply and demand should be maintained», adds RTE.
In this same report, the manager looks ahead to next winter. And wants to be rather optimistic, since he considers the winter of 2023-2024 “as less risky than the previous one electrically“. “The most acute phase of the energy crisis may have been overcome», dares RTE, even «if a rapid return to the pre-crisis situation does not seem achievable (whether for the production of the nuclear fleet or for the price of gas)” in the years to come.
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On the gas side, the general manager of Engie, Catherine MacGregor, also assured this Friday that France was going “succeed once again in getting through the next winter » 2023-2024. For the current winter, the leader of the leading natural gas distributor in France no longer has any worries. “We were able to spend this winter in satisfactory conditions“, she declared on Radio Classique, while acknowledging to have been”also a little helped by the climate“.