- The French Government has asked the representatives of all the departments, the prefects, to provide for and plan in an orderly manner the energy cuts that would lead to the energy emergency this winter. This has been said by a source from the Paris Government to the AFP. According to this, each department must have prepared these planned two-hour cuts that will affect 60% of the population of Hexagon: if it does not run out of house light, it leaves without metro or train or the children run out of class at home.
The energy crisis that is occurring throughout Europe has a special component in the French state: electricity production is more linked to the good activity of nuclear power plants than in most countries, and it has happened that half of their reactors are stationed, sometimes by conventional scheduled maintenance operations, but in some cases these plants have had to stop because of serious operating problems, such as boilers oxide and pipes. The TEN company, which runs the French electricity grid, warned at the end of November that this winter, and especially in January, is at risk of electricity cuts, as nuclear reactors have problems getting back into production.
In recent weeks the French government has been preparing plans for these cuts to be made in the most orderly way possible and last week has filtered to the citizens through the AFP agency the plan that advances an image that the emergency may have in January. In other words, if the energy crisis that has aggravated the Ukrainian war worsened, and the biggest concern for the authorities is that the government has organized controlled and alternating power outages, concerned that the uncontrolled will open up chaos.
This scenario, which has so far been hypothesized, could become a reality, according to the authorities, if at the same time as strong cooling occurs, connections with other European countries will fail and at the same time consumption will decrease. In this case, the prefets would place in their respective departments the two-hour discontinuous power plants planned by area and sector.
These controlled blackouts would be hit if one of them did not find 60% of the French population, for a single period of two hours, never – the authorities say – for a second period and patients at high risk in hospitals would be free from interruptions.
Power cuts would take place at the most consumed hours, from 08:00 to 13:00 or from 18:00 to 20:00. Schools that can capture the cuts will not open that day so they don't run out of light, heating or alarm. In the case of passengers, some train or metro trips could be suspended to avoid entrapments in the middle of the track.
According to the Government's emergency plan, three days before the controlled cuts occur, the EcoWatt service will issue a red signal that will let you know the department or area affected by the shutdowns and who was charged the day before 17:00. But to have that information, the citizen has to download the EcoWatt app on his phone or on his computer, telling his coordinates to the system.
In addition, the Controlled Shutdown Plan provides for other details, such as the operation of emergency services in certain areas when the towers serving the mobile network are out of light. The government is bringing them forward to the citizens on this website.