2023-11-02 13:10:19
We call it Fire, for “Rapid Electric Response Force”. Since this Thursday morning, this team of Enedis specialists has been deployed on the ground, while France has been hit hard by storm Ciaran. Nicknamed “the Enedis firefighters”, it has a very clear mission: restore power as quickly as possible.
Created after the two devastating storms of 1999 – French people sometimes remained for very long hours without power – this emergency system makes it possible to mobilize considerable resources in a few hours during major climatic events.
This Thursday morning, there is an emergency: 1.2 million households were without electricity when they woke up. But the Fire did not wait until the last moment to deploy. As of Wednesday, photos and videos of teams from the manager of the public electricity distribution network heading towards Brittany had been broadcast on social networks.
In a press release published this Thursday morning, Enedis ensures that “3,000 Enedis employees and service providers are mobilized with appropriate logistical resources, including 300 generators and 30 helicopters”. In addition to the teams already mobilized locally, additional reinforcements from other regions were dispatched, particularly to Brittany, Pays de la Loire and Normandy.
3,500 generators available for repairs
In this system, Fire plays a major role. According to Enedis, it is capable of deploying 2,500 men and women volunteers throughout the metropolitan territory, and it can rely on six crisis units, seven emergency call centers, 11 storage platforms including nearly 220 repair kits and more than 3000 generators, two mobile source stations.
All to be able to intervene as quickly as possible on a distribution network of 1.4 million km, or 35 times around the Earth. “Work bases”, presented as small military camps, are thus deployed locally to organize repair actions.
The national crisis unit has also been activated to organize interventions as quickly as possible after each report of a power outage. This Thursday morning, it was overwhelmed with requests, as evidenced by the “site overload” messages displayed on the Enedis website.
The 12 logistics platforms called Serval, strategically distributed throughout the territory, make it possible to provide the equipment and logistics necessary for repairing the electrical network: tools, machines, nacelles, trucks, equipment packaged in the form of “Fire kits” , deliverable within a few hours, plus 3,500 generators (GE) to restore electricity during the repairs.
An organization that has proven itself. As Enedis points out on its site, “the total outage minutes in 2022 did not exceed 56 minutes on the national average. Fire’s goal is to restore 90% of customers in less than 48 hours. »
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