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Paris (AFP) – The risk of targeted power cuts in January or February cannot be “excluded” but the winter most at risk will “probably” be that of 2023-2024, estimated Thursday evening the president of the Commission of regulation of Emmanuelle Wargon’s energy.
“We have a delicate winter there now and we probably also have a delicate or difficult winter in 2023-2024. This is also where what we will do on gas imports, electricity imports, the rest of the measures community emergency, the beginning of the reflection on the organization of the market, this will play on winter 23-24″, she declared on BFM Business.
“We have a good chance that things will not go too badly for the winter of 2022-23 in the end. For 2023-2024, it’s still really very uncertain”, she added, acknowledging that this second winter under tension would “probably” be the riskiest.
Regarding this winter, she once more indicated that we might not “exclude that there are targeted cuts. It is not 100% sure. It will depend on our sobriety or not, the weather, our capacity reaction when the RTE network manager announces that it is very tense”.
The electrical distribution network “Enedis is preparing for it with the prefects in case. We are always in + in case +. It is not written that this will happen”, she underlined
Fear of cuts has been reignited following the latest forecast from RTE, the electricity transmission system operator, which warned last Friday of a “high” risk of tensions on the electricity system in January, due to the restart more slower than expected of EDF’s nuclear reactors – almost half of which are still shut down.
Asked regarding electricity prices, Ms Wargon said how things would go would depend on a “critical moment” which is “the arrival of the reactors that are currently under stress maintenance or repair for the generation grid in December and January.
“If they arrive in accordance with EDF’s updated forecasts, that means that we will be able to cope in January if it is not too cold and that means that prices for the first and second quarters might stabilize, or even drop,” she said.
© 2022 AFP
