Thanks to its nuclear fleet and mild weather, France reaches a new record for electricity exports

France exported a record volume of electricity to its neighbors on Friday, we learned on Tuesday from the electricity network manager RTE, in particular due to lower national needs and better availability of the nuclear fleet. This record amount of export capacities “reserved” by the markets, Friday at 4:00 p.m., reached some 18,680 megawatts (MW), compared to 17,415 MW, during the previous record established on February 22, 2019, indicated RTE, confirming information from daily Les Echos.

The actual export volume may vary marginally up to an hour before the appointed time, said RTE, which was not able to provide the corrected data immediately. This electricity was exported to the United Kingdom (3 GW), Germany and Benelux (5.4 GW), Switzerland (3.2 GW), Italy (4.4 GW) and Spain (2.6 GW), detailed RTE. “There is a need at the moment which is a little lower in consumption in France, since we are in a holiday period”, underlined RTE to explain this record export peak.

In addition to departures on vacation, “temperatures last week were high for the season, particularly on Thursday”, where they “could have been 4 to 6 degrees above seasonal norms”, indicated Météo-France, which also explains the lower electricity needs in France. RTE also highlights “competitive” production costs, given that “the availability of all our means of production, particularly nuclear”, has increased compared to last year.

Placed in an unprecedented situation due to corrosion problems detected on several nuclear reactors, France had to import electricity in 2022, which had not happened for 42 years. Since then, “a notable proportion of the nuclear fleet has been able to be checked and repaired during the year,” RTE reported at the beginning of November, during its traditional press briefing on the passage of winter.

The network manager then considered the risk of a power cut this winter to be "low", unlike last year, when the stress corrosion crisis made many reactors unavailable and caused nuclear production to fall to its lowest level. lowest level in 30 years. Wind power also provided “good production” last week, covering around 20% of national electricity production, RTE said.