Belgium demands probe into “massive” French power export curbs
By Paul Homewood
This all seems a bit of a mystery at the moment:
The ongoing cuts, which French TSO RTE said it had been forced to carry out to ensure the safety of the grid, were weighing on already low French prices in an oversupplied market, helping to keep them well below those in Belgium and Germany, analysts said.
RTE warned the curbs, which have limited interconnector flows between France and all its neighbouring countries to 40% of maximum capacity, according to Creg, will “continue until early May”.
The French grid would be “subject to similar constraints” from August to mid-October, it added.
“Massive” impact
“We have seen a reduction in French power exports towards neighbouring countries, which is contributing to very low prices,” said Emeric de Vigan, vice president for power at consultancy Kpler.
“Since 11 March RTE started to massively reduce French [power] exports,” said one German trader. “These issues are affecting the market massively.”
The capacity cuts come amid strong wind, solar and hydropower production, which were also creating oversupply amid low power demand, said Clement Bouilloux, French market expert at Montel’s EnAppSys.
French day-ahead prices fell to EUR 1.42/MWh last Saturday and cleared at EUR 18.39/MWh for Friday, EUR 40 and EUR 24 below German and Belgian prices, respectively. Meanwhile, the French front-month contract was last seen trailing EUR 19.82 below its German counterpart.
“In a normal context, with normal interconnection capacities, these price differences are much smaller,” a Creg spokesperson said.
French net transfer capacities to Germany, meaning capacities made available by RTE for the market before the day-ahead auction, averaged 2.6 GW in the past week, down from an average 5.7 GW in the first week of March.
Meanwhile, monthly export capacities from France to Italy had halved from around 3.5 GWh in normal conditions to 1.8 GWh, an Italian power trader said.
“Crucial” capacity
“Too little information is currently known by the Creg and market players, on the underlying reasons for these capacity reductions,” the Belgian regulator said.
“This is why the Creg decided to contact the French regulator, CRE,” it added.
“The aim is to jointly identify the cause and scope of these problems in order to minimise as far as possible the impact on the results of market coupling."
The level of cross-border capacity was “crucial” to wholesale power prices in a “coupled and integrated market, such as Europe”, the Belgian regulator told Montel.
Maximising cross-border capacity was “one of the constituent elements of European legislation on the organisation of interconnected electricity markets” Creg said. Capacity reductions were “therefore only permitted in exceptional circumstances,” it added.
Tense situation
In a note published for the market players on Wednesday, RTE said it was “experiencing a tense situation” on the grid.
Since 5 March, there had been “significant commercial exchanges” from France to Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy “combined with network unavailability, including essential maintenance in the Lyon region”, it told Montel.
“RTE has had to apply capacity reductions at borders to ensure the safety of the electrical system,” it said, adding it was “committed to minimising the impact of these measures” on the power market.
The CRE was unavailable to comment.
https://www.energymarketprice.com/home/en/news/1163325
Nobody seems to know why these cuts have been made.
We have always assumed that individual countries could make these cuts in future when their own supplies are tight.
But this raises a new possibility – that exports could also be curbed to “ensure the safety of the electrical system”.
If nothing else, this latest news shows that European legislation is powerless in situations like this.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
During a winter dunkelflaute, you can bet the French will stop exporting electricity via the interconnectors to the UK. It should be very interesting!
Indeed. My generator is wired in to supply the freezers, my log burner is ready, and my batteries will run the TV, router and boiler pumps, recharged with the generator. (We get 5 day power cuts already due to bad infrastructure.)
My generator is ready, my log burner is ready and I have camping stoves.
Lost power for 11 days after the 1987 storm and 7 days after the Burns Day storm. In one month alone last year we had 27 days with short outages….and this is Kent just 6 miles from Canterbury! Things are better now since the leaking pole transformer burst into flames and had to be replaced.
Dual fuel generator (propane cylinders are much easier and the fuel doesn’t age) 2 deep cycle batteries/inverters, wood burner and despite having mains gas, I also have a (retro) calor gas oven/hob. PLUS as the ultimate “prepper” last year I built a wood gasifier (more for fun really) that runs an old Suffolk Punch lawn mower engine belt connected to an old car alternator…it really does work.
I think you can bet the French will export to the highest bidder 🙂
Agreed, of course.
But, Phillip, do you really believe that our French chums might not be tempted to “stop exporting electricity via the interconnectors to the UK” even if there was no dunkelflaute; just for badness in fact, when politically opportune?
Surely not!
It’s very possible. I suspect they have tested it before. I recall some time agoo both interconnectors simultaneously going down, something that is not supposed to happen.
They’ll just say to surrounding countries, “How much power do you want, get bidding”
A few years ago the French threatened to cut the power supply to the Channel Islands, over a fishing dispute iirc.
Just serviced the big generator!
When the moment arrives, It’ll come down to in-fighting, as with the pandemic PPE kit – basically National security trumps international cooperation.
Arghh at least that explains some of the anomalies on pricing ive seen over the last week or so with pricing in Northern Europe. Of course means that when we are importing from Belgium/Netherlands its probably even more carbon intensive than usual presumably as they make up deficient energy shortfall from their fossil fuelled stns. Im also not surprised with the French who are only in EU if it suits their needs not their neighbours.
I have commented previously about the ‘option tempo’ tariff for residential customers. Its a STOD tariff with increasing numbers now attracted to it. The coincidence of ‘red days’ with maximum export to UK is clear. The red days came to an end at the start of April, so there is no longer financial incentive to EdF to export with increased costs picked up by French customers. So unsurprisingly they haven’t.
The realisation that French customers are ‘subsidising’ EdF profits from exports will grow. I expect the use of interconnectors from France in future years to reflect this.
That the UK or Germany/Italy/Belgium expect French supplies to meet their requirements before those of internal customers is a dangerously stupid notion.
There is also the expectation that France maintains their generation in order to prop up the grids of countries run by retards such as the UK and Germany. An indication that they might be getting a bit tired of this was Macaroon suggesting that Switzerland contributes to funding one of the new nuclear plants as they expect to import power from it to prop up their grid.
Why would they need a reason?
for these capacity reductions
What definition of ‘capacity’ are they using? Is this a translation error?
This is a remarkably one-sided article, clearly driven by talking to traders in Belgium and Germany. The examples given are completely unconvincing as one would need much more data to assess the real impact of the restrictions in France. There are two plausible and linked explanations. Which is more important depends on your degree of cynicism about EDF.
First, EDF is clearly in the position of being a discriminating monopolist in the regional power market. By restricting its power exports, it can drive up the price of the remaining export by enough to offset the reduced volume. However, that wouldn’t be sensible if they dump the volumes not exported onto the domestic market. The article implies that is what has happened but I doubt that is correct over the whole period.
Second, I suspect that EDF is scheduling a lot of maintenance for its nuclear plants and is taking them off-line or reducing output substantially. RTE’s terminology would simply reflect a concern about shortage of generation to meet domestic needs in France. No one sane expects EDF or France to give priority to power exports at the risk of driving up market prices in France by a lot. EDF may not want to be too open about the reduction in nuclear output that they expect.
The bigger point is that everyone in Europe has come to rely on power exports from France underpinned by its nuclear fleet. These plants are ageing and require more maintenance or will have more frequent unplanned outages. Germany and neighbouring countries have made themselves much more vulnerable by closing their own nuclear plants. So they find themselves relying upon French power when France has its own priorities. The same, of course, applies to the UK. The absence of any strategic thinking tells one everything one needs to know about energy policy in Europe!
Gordon,
You and Ray Sanders make some very valid points and I would expect that you are both closer to the mark that the original explanation which does not make a lot of sense (to me). As more of the grid is connected to unreliables the more the grid forming generators will struggle with the maintenance of voltage and frequency. Sadly few of our politicians and none of the green idiots have any concept of grid forming and grid following generators. Even less have any idea of the cost involved in making the grid robust.
Looking at Gridwatch, French nuclear output doesn’t seem to have dropped off: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/
Doesn’t it just.
It’s all about he Games, man, the Games – the Olumpics. What did I read ,last coupla days about getting more interconnectors for security, bla bla bla … Let’s all join hands together , and ……… JUMP ! Isn’t that fire hot ( too hot?) …
Our inter-connectors to Europe do NOT provide any inertia to the grid, neither do solar nor most wind farms. As I type I/C are producing 7.8GW (24.25% of total supply) with solar at 3.34GW(10.35%) and wind at 8.78GW (27.21%) that makes 62% of supply with no grid firming inertia.
Most people worry about adverse conditions in winter impacting electricity supply but all major 21st century UK outages have occurred in spring or summer – twice in May, once in August. A combined sunny/windy low demand weekend with high l/C imports and the UK is milliseconds away from grid collapse should any significant supply go down. That significant supply going down could in fact be an inter-connector itself as they are neither especially reliable and are prone to being “manipulated”.
For those who worry about nuclear plants being terrorist targets bear in mind that there are I/C grid connection points that are very soft targets indeed with no protection whatsoever.
We are NOT sleep walking into a disaster, we are being deliberately pushed into one.
NG are having to look at artificial inertia sources, their solution, some wind turbines driven by grid power! – ‘With only a small amount of energy fed into them, they can spin at the required rate of 3000RPM, the speed that ensures synchronicity with the 50hz Grid system.
The result, in theory, is a solution to the problem of creating inertia in an increasingly wind- and solar-powered electricity system, allowing for a faster push away from fossil fuels that emit carbon’ – I kid you not, what they get as part of the system with coal, gas & nuclear generators, consumers will now be faced with more costs to try to make renewables slightly viable
From the article: In a normal context, with normal interconnection capacities, these price differences are much smaller,” a Creg spokesperson said.
Who defines “normal” ?
How is “normal” supply defined when the variable output from renewables is involved?
How is “normal” demand defined with changeable northern European weather?
Once again, the old CEGB strategy of “being prepared” by always having sufficient dispatchable capacity available looks good.
Interconnectors from mainland Europe might have a use with pumped storage in the UK, meaning that loss of an interconnector is not catastrophic.
”The capacity cuts come amid strong wind, solar and hydropower production, which were also creating oversupply amid low power demand…”
So with a surfeit of greenery, low demand, why are these French cuts a problem – he asked innocently?
France had 59 nuclear factors when the decision was made – under the Hollande regime I think - to close a third because of over-capacity and replace with wind with a view to closing down the rest. Since most of these reactors were nearing end of life, it was deemed to be the least cost option and ticked the decarbonising box… yes, nuclear doesn’t emit CO2, but that’s a minor detail.
This decision was reversed by the Macronavirus creature in 2022, but by then serious problems arose in about half the fleet due to lack of maintenance – don’t spend money on reactors that will be decommissioned.
I believe 26 reactors were taken off-line for work to be done. This together with plans fir new reactors led to renationalisation of EDF who are skint and can’t afford the cost.
The reason for the reduced export, is probably because the full nuclear capacity is still not available because of repairs.
After Europe cut itself off from Russian gas, Germany and UK we’re confident they could rely on France to augment supply via the interconnector whilst the French were pointing to Germany to plug any supply gaps.
The whole ‘transition’ farce is a comedy of errors.
This is why interconnectors are not a guaranteed power source – todays friends could be tomorrows enemies
In response to a few comments about the condition, etc of France’s nukes, it is worth mentioning the huge refurbishment and modernisation programme that is nearing completion. It should have been more or less done by now but it was disrupted by Covid working restrictions and disrupted by the discovery of corrosion cracking in some secondary safety piping at certain plants.
The programme – “Grand Carenage” – has been running since 2016ish. They are projecting a total spend of €45 – 50 bn to recondition and modernise all of their nukes (bar the oldest one (Fessenheim)) and extend their operating lives by at least 20 years.
In addition they are ordering 6 more plants with options for a further 8.
They are projecting a total spend of €45 – 50 bn
No problem when there’s a queue of power-hungry importers to help pay the bill.
They certainly seem to have cut nuclear production during April towards the levels of last summer. Part of the story has been a surplus in Spain caused by excess rainfall filling reservoirs.
https://timera-energy.com/blog/hydro-levels-drive-surge-in-negative-prices-in-iberia/
It is likely that French hydro is similarly affected.
That means a turnaround in the trade balance with Spain. Scroll down here and set 2024 to see how prices have moved among France’s neighbours this year (You may need to adjust the parameters to show 2024)
https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/marche/evolution-prix