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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the advice of switching off appliances and lights at night. Surely if France has an energy production shortfall, it must be at peak period which is during the day from 9am until about 7pm [1], not in the middle of the night. Particularly given the vast majority of its production costs the same whether you use it or not (nuclear, wind). And even for gas, the problem isn't the quantity of gas available, it is the output of the gas power plants available. So saving gas during the night doesn't help peak production.

[1] https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit...

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On top of the peak production issue, there is also a fuel reserve issue

As half of the the nuclear power plants are down, they have to rely on gas. And gas has become difficult to import.

France feels both the liberalisation of the electricity production : Private operators promised to produce cheaper and cleaner power back in the 2000s. But they didn't. Virtually all of them used a scheme (the Arenh system) to get public electricity in bulk, sold to them at a loss and at a fixed price, so that they could compete with the public company on retail prices. Then the government was still in their privatization bubble, lobbies told them everything was fine, and they began to stop to maintain and to phase out public nuclear power plants.

And now we no longer have electricity.

The backup would be electricity made with natural gas. But you need to save that natural gas now. Russia froze the export of natural gas. And other companies know that gas is in short supply, so prices skyrocket.

So yeah, we have to turn everything off at night.

I am sure France isn't contemplating blackouts to save on the gas supply.

i'm just saying there are 2 issues nowadays :

peak production issue

and how to keep producing electricity in the next year, as gas is difficult to source, and the tank might eventually run out.

The government is just making a single campaign to simplify the PR ! In the same ads, they ask citizens to both reduce energy consumption (eg lower heating to 18°C), and to delay intensive usage out of peak hours (eg use you washing machine or the space heater during the day and not in the evening)

In France, a lot of heating is done during the night (Water, buildings with so cold "accumulator electrical heating").

You also need to think that France is not alone. If they can save during the night, this is extra power which can be exported to Germany where the base production relies on coal and gas. This way, Germany uses less gas during the night and can export more during the day to help France.

We are fully interconnected, we need to look beyond "just our country".

But that assumes the blackouts are the result of gas power plants not running at full capacity at peak period because of a lack of gas. I don't believe that is the case, at least not this winter.

they run at full capacity, but the capacity of natural gas power plant is very limited

Nuclear power plants used to make up for the steady base consumption. Natural gas power plants used to be the last ones to be solicited. They were just used to adjust to the marginal needs, not to produce most of the power.

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