“We are almost out of business” in view of the risk of power cuts this winter in France, said Saturday the president of the RTE network manager, Xavier Piechaczyk.
“Zero risk does not exist, and I cannot say that it will not happen, because we can always be faced with a huge bubble of cold at the end of February-beginning of March, but seen from today the “Most of the risks are behind us,” said Xavier Piechaczyk on France Inter. “We are not at all in the configuration of the risk of cuts that we could have envisaged in November if the French had not substantially reduced their consumption and if the winter had not been so mild”, a- he observed.
France produced very little electricity last year, the lowest since 1992, according to a report published Thursday by RTE. The country has been hit both by the international gas crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and by extremely low hydraulic and nuclear production. The latter, affected in particular by corrosion problems on certain reactors, reached its lowest level since 1988.
“Are the French going to continue to be sober? »
“EDF plans to gradually restore the capacity of its fleet but it will not be miraculous this summer, so we will gradually regain the availability of nuclear power by 2025”, recalled Xavier Piechaczyk.
“In 2023, it is planned to commission two large offshore (wind) farms (at sea, editor’s note) what are Saint-Brieuc and Fécamp, plus all the land-based renewable energies; we have to continue at this pace and even speed it up a bit, ”he advocated. “We will have more electricity production in 2023 than in 2022, it will progress in 2024 too, now there are a lot of things that play on an electric winter. The first parameter is: will the French continue to be sober? “The second challenge is the weather,” he said.