After a historic year of electricity imports, the relatively mild weather, and the relaunch of nuclear reactors, France has again been exporting electricity to the rest of Europe since the first day of 2023, regaining its top spot as the bloc’s main provider.
And not only that but, in the past 42 years, France had not had a winter where it imported more electricity than it exported.
France started the year by exporting more electricity to neighboring countries than it imports. As of midday on January 11, it exported about 12,000 megawatts (MW), compared to the approximately 2,000 MW it imported in the same period last year.
With one exception for the morning of 6 January, its streak has been uninterrupted, French network manager RTE said on Tuesday adding that the net balance of electricity exports since January 1 amounts to 1.4 terawatt hours (TWh).
According to RTE data, the largest part of the export went to its most immediate neighbors Italy, Switzerland, and the UK, while exchanges with Germany and Spain remained balanced and those with Spain favored imports.
In a situation that had not occurred since November 2021, according to RTE data, with exports slightly surpassing imports from January 6 to 9, exports from France to Germany and Belgium have been uninterrupted.
French electricity grid operator RTE, which welcomed a drop in energy consumption and an increase in production potential on Tuesday, underscored that France is better prepared for the winter than anyone expected at the start of autumn and can now better face pressure situations.
Compared to the same period from 2014 to 2019, as RTE noted, electricity consumption in France in the first week of January was down by around 9% and the average consumption also went down by more than 8% over the last four weeks.
France’s policy to reduce electricity consumption, which is in full swing and is happening country-wide, from the industry to the services and the housing sector, is additionally helped by the unusually high temperatures for January, which are – compared to the same month between 2014 and 2019 – on average, up to 9.2 degrees higher.
According to calculations based on data between 3 and 10 January from RTE, French wind farms also performed well, with production reaching more than 15% of the total production of the French electricity sector.
