France had energy to spare on Friday. The country exported a record volume of electricity to its neighbors on December 22, the electricity network manager, RTE, announced on Tuesday.
Export capacities “reserved” by the markets (the electricity that we resell, therefore), reached 18,680 megawatts (MW) on Friday at 4 p.m., compared to 17,415 MW, during the previous record established on February 22, 2019. indicated RTE.
Main buyers of this electricity: the United Kingdom (3 GW), Germany and the Benelux (5.4 GW), Switzerland (3.2 GW), Italy (4.4 GW) and Spain (2.6 GW), according to the list provided by RTE.
The temperatures helped
“There is a need at the moment which is a little lower in consumption in France, since we are in a holiday period”, underlined RTE to explain this record export peak.
Furthermore, “temperatures last week were high for the season, particularly on Thursday”, where they “could have been 4 to 6°C above seasonal norms”, Météo-France indicated to AFP, which also explains the lower national needs.
Far from the situation of 2022
Finally, RTE highlights “competitive” production costs, given that “the availability of all our means of production, particularly nuclear”, has increased compared to 2022. At that time, the country, faced with problems of corrosion on several of its nuclear reactors, had had to import electricity, which had not happened for forty-two years.
Since then, “a notable proportion of the nuclear fleet has been able to be checked and repaired during the year,” RTE reported at the beginning of November, during its traditional press briefing on the passage of winter.
The network manager then considered the risk of a power cut this winter to be “low”, unlike last year, when the stress corrosion crisis made many reactors unavailable and caused nuclear production to fall to its lowest level. lowest level in thirty years.
Note: wind power also provided “good production” last week, covering around 20% of national electricity production. Enough to fuel hopes.