Some of you may have seen news items about the predicted shortfall in grid capacity this coming winter.
You can help by using the site below to register for alerts about the state of the electrical grid.
During periods of high demand you can help prevent blackouts by reducing your consumption where possible.
useful Badger, thanks (and registered).
I read somewhere (can’t find it just now) that France have been buying cheap electricity from Spain during the summer to assist with maintaining supply whilst France is “refreshing” some of its ageing nuclear reactors which have been taken off line and in dire need of maintenance.
Hopefully, that as well as the alerte vigilance will mitigate any outages.
and I reckon many of us will be being far more thoughtful about using our various electrical appliances…
Hope this is not behind a paywall, nut basically quite scary about electricity price increases. And that only 24 of France’s 56 nuclear reactors are actually working right now
M Macron has already warned that we must be prepared for difficult times … but this article is hopeful…
It is of course good that consumers are being protected, but the money has to come from somewhere!
Absolutely, there is no bottomless money pit…
I’ll be happy to cut-back to minimum usage of electrics… and I’ve had the logs delivered…
and warned OH he’s got to wear 13 layers… 
Spoke to my sister in UK earlier She has already turned off the immersion heater for her water tank apart from one hour to heat ready for evening showers and she is not using the oven apart from sundays when the whole family are there (husband and son are trampers so away for week(s) living on the road and other boy often out). She lives on a big estate with many earning just enough to pay the mortgage and eat and they are all worried how they willcope. I did say and she agreed with me for once that growing up in the 60’s we had no heating until a coal fire was lit late afternoon and that gave very little heat being in one room, ice inside the windows in winter but we were healthy and no one ever died. Think a lot of folks nowadays are far too soft and the thought of putting on more clothing or more bedclothes and warmer stuff, they cannot understand. Also getting outside and doing something rather than TV, mobile phones and video games will help if they are turned off /not charged up continuously.
Oh the joys of seeing the ice-patterns on the inside of the bedroom windows…
Many of us have been there, done that… and can do it again if need be.
Hopefully, with care and attention to usage… all will be well.
I thought I had offered an explanation about that at post #2 
Finance minister saying that rises will be contained, whatever that means: https://www.sudouest.fr/economie/inflation-la-hausse-des-tarifs-de-l-electricite-en-2023-sera-contenue-assure-bruno-le-maire-12050702.php
what you could manage when you were younger ≠what you can manage today - hypothermia kills old folk; maybe that’s what the government wants?
standards of living have improved, do you actually want to go back?
where do you go back to, anyway? We survived living in caves - why not return to that?
I’ll live in our cave… it stays a steady 15c all year round… and there’s wine… so handy 
but, seriously, we can (possibly) all do without some of the excesses we might have become used to… certainly don’t need to heat the whole house for just the 2 of us… etc etc… I’ve got some serious thinking to do.
In the UK a big part of the problem is lack of insulation - a lot of those 60’s houses are still around and many haven’t had any improvements in energy efficiency.
more essentially, the council housing stock (much of which has been offloaded to housing associations whose only motive is profit of course)
Beggars belief… but I know you’re right.
From our very first home, we went the whole-hog with each property we bought… fair enough we subsequently sold each easily and at a profit… but the energy savings meantime gave us lower bills and made our lives more comfortable… what’s not to like… ?? and we scrimped to do the renovations etc… we didn’t have money to burn
You said
This gives the scale of the issue. Some could mean 3 or 4, rather than 24.
yes - some against the total… but that has been explained - would you rather they not carry out maintenance?
Whilst some may not be producing at capacity, electricity is being brought in to fill the gap in a timely fashion.
Is there something wrong with that?
To add…
So then 56 functioning reactors in January 2022 according to this reference
No doubt, as stated, if there are some down for maintenance during the summer whilst supplies are being imported from Spain, they will be back on line later in the year - unless you know different of course…
Maintenace has been lacking for many years as have the funding to do so. So much so the Gouvernement is seriously thinking of re nationalizing EDF as the debts mount up. Something to be said about PPP with national infrastructure.
Pretty much the same for older hydroelectric plants. (Most of which aren’t running at full capacity because of the lack of water). Currently in Burgundy there’s a lake being emptied for maintenance, down stream there’s an hydroelectric plant not using the water to generate electricity….
If anyone has a subscription to https://abos.alternatives-economiques.fr
There’s a very interesting article on the subject.
I’ll have to do some cutting and pasting to post it though.
