Will we experience power cuts in France this winter? The answer will mostly depend on the weather. The harsher the winter, the more the population will demand energy. Which logically could quickly lead to a risk of network saturation and some power outages.
In addition to ensuring “accelerating all the renewable energy projects underway in the territory”, the government has put in place several levers that will make it possible to regulate the voltage on the entire network:
– The first is to cut power to 12 companies under contract to have some ballast in case there is high energy use in the rest of the country.
– The second is to lower the electrical voltage by 5%. Concretely this means that there will be less current available but this should go unnoticed.
And if all this is not enough, only then there could be cuts. But they will never last more than 2 hours and they will be done by neighborhood in rotation throughout the country.
Finally, to keep abreast of the state of the French energy network, the RTE has set up an EcoWatt signal that can be consulted by everyone and which works a bit like an electricity weather report.
In addition, there are now plenty of eco-gestures that are quite simple to carry out:
– Use household appliances during “off-peak periods”, i.e. afternoons, nights or weekends
– Set the heating to 19°C which can represent up to 7% energy savings
– Opt for LED or low consumption bulbs
– Avoid leaving the game console or computer on all the time
– Turn off all electronic devices before going to sleep thanks to the multi-socket switch
It should be noted that this situation is unprecedented in France and that next winter may well not be identical to that of this year. For this, France must make a success of its energy transition and regain a certain independence vis-à-vis energy. On the citizen side, it is energy sobriety that is above all recommended.
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