Risks of power cuts: the success of Ecowatt, the "Smart Bison of the electrical system"

It is the "Smart Bison of the electrical system", in the words of the Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Or the "electricity weather forecast". Ecowatt makes it possible to follow the evolution of the state of the national electricity network. As the risk of power cuts looms in France this winter, Ecowatt is increasingly popular with the French: 700,000 of them have downloaded the mobile application launched by RTE (Electricity transport network, the French network manager), in partnership with the Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe), more than a month ago.

"We had 300,000 downloads this week. We were at 700,000 downloads on Sunday (December 4) evening, that more than doubled in five days", declared this Monday December 5 on France Inter Xavier Piechaczyk, president of the management board of RTE.

Ecowatt is the alert system set up by the authorities to anticipate power cuts. This tool sends notifications about the status of the network to its subscribers. It informs three days in advance of the state of electricity consumption and production. Ecowatt is available in three color codes: green (normal consumption), orange (tensioned electrical system) and red (very tensioned electrical system). Thus, in the event of a very tense situation of the electrical system this winter, Ecowatt will issue a red signal three days in advance to warn of the risk of targeted and temporary cuts. It is also possible to subscribe to the cut vigilance alert and thus be notified by SMS in the event of a risk of cuts.

When this red signal is emitted, the public authorities will ask for sobriety efforts to overcome the peaks in electricity consumption for the day, located between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. If consumption does not drop after the emission of a red signal, rotating cuts of 2 hours organized on portions of departments would be "inevitable", recalls RTE, which estimates that January is the month most at risk.

"There is a risk of a few days of red Ecowatts throughout the winter", warned Xavier Piechaczyk on Thursday December 1 on Franceinfo, "but it mainly depends on the weather". "Power cuts are inevitable if electricity consumption does not decrease in the slots" in red, according to RTE. On its website, Ecowatt gives examples of the eco-gestures to adopt in order to act on its consumption: reduce the temperature of the heating as much as possible, turn off unnecessary lights or reduce the lighting or even postpone certain domestic uses (dishwasher, washing machine, etc.)

Ecowatt has already shown its effectiveness. In April 2022, the system sent an orange alert asking its users to make an effort between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. "France has saved the equivalent of the power of a nuclear reactor while Ecowatt lacked notoriety", recently reminded L'Express Nicolas Goldberg, energy manager at Terra Nova.

This winter, France is exposed to the risk of power cuts, in particular due to the lowest level of nuclear electricity production. Half of its fleet of reactors is unavailable due to scheduled but sometimes prolonged maintenance, or corrosion problems. Schools will not be spared by power cuts and in this case closed. Trains, metros or trams may be canceled or interrupted to avoid having passengers stranded in the middle of the track.

Saturday, on TF1, Emmanuel Macron invited the French not to "panic" in the face of the risks of power cuts this winter, even judging that they could be avoided if consumption were reduced by 10% according to the plan presented by the government. "If all together we stick to the sobriety plan that has been presented by the government, that is to say to reduce by about 10% compared to our usual consumption (..) then yes we will be able to pass even with a December and a cold January this period, it depends on us," he said.