Comment by realusername

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France...

This is the reality of the grid, France is a net exporter of electricity in the EU and has been for the longest time. The only outlier is 2022.

You have to understand that the debate in France for a long time in the 2000s was that building capacity was not needed because there's already too much of it (!).

The country also pushed to electric heating to use some of this extra capacity making France one of the highest electric heating share at around 40% (Germany has less than 5%).

> So now when you apparently couldn't backtrack more no one cares about meeting a varying demand?

The varying demand always meant the seasonal demand! You are in europe here and not a tropical country. The problem has always been meeting the winter load.

You are again looking at yearly figures instead of instants. I already included data from 2021. It follows a similar trend in 2020, 2019 and earlier.

Here's a few examples:

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...

Let me break it down for you:

Is a cold spell a yearly happening or an instant? It is an instant.

What does French neighbors do? They have large amounts of fossil capacity because they know they can't rely on French exports when a cold spell hits.

They need to both supply their own grid and supply France.

Who cares if France is exporting enormous amounts of electricity all around Europe during early autumn when temperatures are mild and no one cares?

When the grid is strained France relies on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production since the nuclear electricity is so incredible inflexible that it can't be utilized to match a grid load.

What would happen if you had two French grids next to each other both trying to export massive electricity when no one needed it while not being able to supply itself when a cold spell hits?