France sent an urgent electricity alert to neighboring countries including Britain and Spain this week, asking them to be ready to send as much electricity as possible after a major transaction error jeopardized supplies. of France.
Unusual warnings add to energy tensions across Europe as the region faces the worst of the situation power crisis for decades due to skyrocketing costs due to Russian cuts gas flow.
It also highlights severe strains in France’s power grid, which is grappling with an unprecedented number of blackouts at nuclear reactors – the core of the country’s power generation system.
French grid operator RTE said on Tuesday it had sent out an appeal to neighboring countries to prepare to export more electricity overnight. The UK’s National Grid and a person close to Spain’s power grid confirmed that their country had received the alert.
The claim was triggered by a transaction error by one of France’s regional energy suppliers, which accidentally oversold huge amounts of electricity in a two-day period.
Électricité de Strasbourg – which supplies electricity to the area around the eastern French city and is majority owned by state utility company EDF – said in a statement that it was investigating the “trouble”. dysfunction”.
It said it mis-sold 2.03 gigawatts and 5.75GW of electricity in two separate transactions on September 6 and 7, and later added that the failure cost it 60 million euros after the balance. its supply needs. Movie with RTE describes the issue as an IT problem.
Such urgent requests for help are rare. According to energy companies and grid officials, network operators typically ship no more than a few units a year, taking action when they perceive the risk of supply falling short of demand.
However, energy companies are worried about the potential disruption to intra-European gas and electricity business if the region experiences shortages this winter.
The French warning was sent out after rebalancing operations later in the day indicated a possible electricity shortfall at the Électricité de Strasbourg, said a person familiar with the matter. EDF declined to comment.
Alerts are sent through the European Awareness System – the system that grid managers use to exchange information – and are used to ensure supplies from elsewhere can be mobilized. In the case of France this week, the last additional supply was not needed, RTE said.
Energy suppliers are constantly entering into deals to match supply with demand. But the amount at stake is unusually large – just one gigawatt is equivalent to the capacity of several nuclear reactors, or enough to power a small city for about a year.
France has been turning to neighboring countries for more electricity on a regular basis due to reduced nuclear supplies, especially Britain, which has net exporter electricity via underground cables – as well as Germany and Spain.
But at the same time, Paris is also squabbling with Berlin and Madrid over a proposed new gas pipeline from Spain to France.
Olaf Scholz, chancellor of Germany, and Pedro Sánchez, prime minister of Spain, support MidCat . pipelineargued that it would help alleviate energy shortages beyond the Iberian peninsula.
But Emmanuel Macron, the French president, opposes the project, saying that the existing gas connections between France and Spain are not being used to their full capacity. A pipeline that would take several years to complete, he added, would not correct the short-term distortions and would push Europe into a state of greater dependence on fossil fuels.
“I don’t understand the short-term problem we’re trying to solve [with this]’ said Macron.
The French government is increasing pressure on the operator of its nuclear power fleet, EDF, to tackle winter blackouts, after unexpected corrosion problems in several reactors. added to scheduled maintenance downtime and caused production to drop to its lowest level in decades.
At a meeting on Friday to resolve gas price crisisEU energy ministers in Brussels signaled their support for a temporary cap on gas import prices including gas from Russia and a wind tax on energy producers .
