Clémence: The morning talk show 7h30-9h30 "À la volée". Well, we're talking about energy again, since energy is back at the heart of the European subject. You know that we have lived a rather unique event, Monday, April 28th, from 12h33 exactly, we had this gigantic power outage that plunged Spain, Portugal and even part of the south-west of France, in the darkest of all. We saw scenes, almost apocalyptic, of blocked elevators, trains and subways stopped, people who were stuck in trains, more than 35,000 people stuck in trains, and a breakdown that lasted more than 18 hours.
Obviously, stores had to close, cash registers were no longer working, internet connections were interrupted. Modern life stopped at 12h33, and then, the next day, in the morning, the current was restored. For now, no cause has been determined, the sabotage was studied by the Spanish justice, which opened a commission of inquiry. They are trying to understand what happened.
We will try to analyze all this with Nicolas, but there are other news, before starting the discussion about energy. We come back to France, the presentation at the beginning of the week, of the National Assembly of the Pluriannual Plan of Energy. I would like to point out that it is a plan without a vote, we will also talk about the number of deputies who were present at the Assembly that day. We are in the industry, but all this is linked. To talk about all this, I am very happy to welcome Nicolas Meilhan. Hello.
Nicolas Meilhan: Hello Clémence.
Clémence: Thank you for being with us.
I remind you that you are a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of the Special School of Public Works, consultant in the specialized strategy on the sectors of transport and energy, and member of the Econoclases and the SPO, France Association for the Study of Oil and Gas Peaks. Nicolas Meilhan, you tweeted yourself on Monday, two hours after the breakdown, "Finally, I've been waiting for it for so long." So how did you expect such a breakdown and why?
Nicolas Meilhan: Listen, we've been doing anything for a long time on electricity. We had warned with France Stratégie, when I was a scientific advisor, we had a report in 2021, especially because we had closed a lot of pilotable production means. And so there we had the blackout, but rather due to a lack of electricity.
And there, in fact, it's the opposite. We had too much and we couldn't evacuate it. And so I've been repeating it for two or three years, even in the media.
In fact, as long as we don't have a blackout, as long as we don't have a red card, well, we're not going to take the question seriously and try to come back, to go from religion to science. Put a little bit of science back in this debate. And the bottom line is that this law for the annual pluriannual programming of energy, this PPE, this blackout, fell at the same time. So it's a bit of a sign of fate. So I don't know if our leaders have heard it or if they're saving time to launch a nth working group, while there is an investigation commission that was made last year on the subject by Senator Vincent Delahaye, who made a report of 750 pages, which is excellent and which went straight to the news. Just take the report.
The new working group with Mr. Deputy Grémyer and Armand, they just need to bring out the report. There's no need to make additional additions. Everything has already been said in this report. So, here we are. And we're going to try to, I hope, get a little bit more serious. And here we can see that we still have situations where at lunchtime, when the sun shines the strongest, there's too much sun in Europe. There are too many solar panels. To give you an example, in fact, especially on Saturday and Sunday, what is France doing? It cuts its solar panels, its solar parks. It does decreasing to be able to absorb the solar energy of Germany.
And in relation to that, we are told, but we have to multiply production by three or four. So we're in a system a little bit lunar. And I hope we're not going to turn the page too quickly of what happened yesterday in Spain. And we're going to draw all the conclusions from it. Because otherwise, we're going to be quickly caught up. I think it was the yellow card. That is, the yellow card, there is only Spain. And it lasts 24 hours. Spain and Portugal. Red card for Europe. And it doesn't go back in place in 24 hours.
Clémence: We're already not far from a red card. I find that when we see the scenes of IESC, that we could see there.
Nicolas Meilhan: Just an example. Because we talk a lot about Spain. But do you know, for example, that there is a French nuclear power plant that was stopped? The Golfech plant near Toulouse. Automatic shutdown due to the loss of frequency of the French network. So there were still accidents. There was another French nuclear plant in the north of France that was also impacted. Nobody knows, nobody talks about it, according to my sources. So we still have a lot of material. I thought about the question.
I looked at it closely. I tried to understand what could have happened. Because when you have a government pro-renewable, anti-nuclear in Spain, I have the impression that the light will take a little time to be made. We may end up with a pangolin or another a little weird beast. Well, I did some observations. I take the public data available on RTE. And there is something that interests me more particularly. It is this link that exists between France and Spain. So roughly speaking, the cruise regime of this link is that France allows to evacuate the surplus of renewable Spanish energy especially to Germany. In fact, the Germans have contracts with the Spaniards. So in fact, we are a bit of a plate. We pass the dishes. We place electricity, Spain and Germany. Except that when Germany still has a lot of solar energy, around lunchtime, it starts to send us back solar energy from home.
Clémence: And Spain sends back solar energy too.
Nicolas Meilhan: And in this case, what happened on Sunday, is that we could not recover both German and Spanish solar energy. So we reversed the connection. That's what happened on Sunday.
Clémence: What does it mean to reverse the connection?
Nicolas Meilhan: That is to say, instead of receiving electricity from Spain, we sent back. So we sent back, roughly speaking, German electricity to Spain. That's what we did. Because electricity has two characteristics. One, it does not store. And the other is that it is transported very easily.
Clémence: I would like us to come back to how electricity works. Maybe a little bit of a B-A-B. You are pedagogical. I know it seems surprising to you, but I think everyone does not know. Because already, when you tell us, to start this analysis, that it was not a problem of not enough energy, but too much, we are already quite surprised. How is it possible to have ... How does it pose a problem to have too much electricity? If you can explain that to us. And then, we are talking about Spain. What is the distinction between the Spanish model and the French model? Because, in France, we are not only on solar panels.
Nicolas Meilhan: Electricity for dummies, roughly speaking. In two minutes. The first very important thing is that electricity cannot be stored. Or it's difficult to store. It can be stored in hydraulic dams, in what are called steps, which are pumping stations, and in large batteries. Today, we have few means of storage because they are expensive. So we're talking about the principle that, broadly speaking, at least in France, we have to get rid of it. So everything that is produced has to be consumed in real time at all times. And that's...
Clémence: Sorry, once again, there's no way of evacuating electricity to a lawless area?
Nicolas Meilhan: If we ever have too much electricity, we can disconnect. You can disconnect a wind farm, you can disconnect a solar panel, you can disconnect from the grid, and in that case, the electricity goes underground. We can do that. But we don't store it. In that case, it's lost. But we can do that. And we do it. We do it because if we don't, we'll have a problem. Yes, it has been done in Spain. That's perhaps the root of the problem. We'll come back to that. You can't store it, it's very easy to transport. Agreed?
So in France, we're the country, the hub of electricity in Europe. We're connected to the UK, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. I agree. We have connections with everyone. And we pass on the dishes. So when, for example, there's a surplus in Germany, we can send it to Spain. When there's a surplus in Spain, we can send it to other countries. All right. So that's our network. OK. And once we've said that, that's it. So a network, particularly the European electricity network, operates at a frequency, OK? A frequency of 50 Hertz. And in fact, as soon as there is a little more production, the frequency will increase. If there is a little less production, it will decrease.
Clémence: Very clear.
Nicolas Meilhan: Except that if it increases by a tiny bit or decreases by a tiny bit, that's when it can jump. So the grid is extremely sensitive to these frequency variations, which are linked either to an increase in production, a decrease, or a variation in consumption. Except that in France, in order to stabilise the grid, so that there is inertia, we have what we call large rotating machines. What are large rotating machines? They're bicycle dynamos. Basically, they're bicycle dynamos. You put it, in inverted commas, at the bottom of the nuclear power station. So these are huge machines. And these are rotating machines. And that adds inertia to the network. So what does that mean? It means that it gives stability.
So if the frequency increases, the machine will turn a little slower, which will reduce the frequency. And it works the other way round too. So that gives stability. And in France, as we produce 70% of our electricity from nuclear power, we have a fairly stable network. And that's just as well, because we're the hub of Europe. So it's in our interests for things to go well. Except that in Spain, when you increase production to 70% from wind turbines and solar panels, you no longer have these big machines. In Spain, when the problem arose, there were still four power stations, which are the four reactors. We have 58. Et donc, vous n'avez plus de stabilité. Et donc, quand il y a un petit incident...
Clémence: In other words, what is a small incident?
Nicolas Meilhan: A minor incident could be what happened in 2006, for example, in Germany, when a high-voltage line was cut across a river to allow a boat to pass. Well, it was done. There was poor coordination and that set off a chain reaction. A small house of cards, dominoes, and you had 10 million European homes, including some in France, which were plunged into darkness. So that's what happened, if you like, after...
Clémence: Because of the variation.
Nicolas Meilhan: In fact, when you cut a high-voltage line, the current that was flowing through that line has to flow through other lines. It will probably be other lines that are overloaded. So if they're overloaded, there's an automatic mechanism that will cut the line. And as it's cut off, it's going to go back onto other lines. So you have a chain reaction. And it happens very quickly. And that's how it happened in Spain. We don't yet have the first domino. I have a hypothesis.
Clémence: So what's your hypothesis?
Nicolas Meilhan: I'd like us to take a close look, and I'm sure RTE has information on this, at the connection, as I said, between France and Spain. Roughly speaking, when you look at the data from RTE, France imports electricity from Spain every day, and evacuates it. Roughly speaking, Spain produced around 30 gigawatts and consumed around 24 gigawatts, so it had to evacuate 6 gigawatts too much, so we evacuate some. 1 gigawatt because that's the capacity of the interconnection.
Clémence: So we're not evacuating enough?
Nicolas Meilhan: No, so we evacuate what we can.
We're doing our part of the job. But then we have the Germans, who are sending us more and more solar energy. So what are we doing in France? At 11am, we shut down certain solar farms in France. And at half past noon, we reverse the interconnection. So instead of getting electricity from the Spanish, we send it to them. At that moment, they have even more. And so they find themselves in overproduction, overload. So it's very clear.
We have the network frequency analyses. So you can see that before 12:30, they're overloaded. What do they do when they're overloaded? Well, they cut. They cut off a solar farm. A solar farm, probably in southern Spain. And then what happens? We used to have a higher frequency. Now it's lower. So there are oscillations in the grid. And we in France can see these oscillations. In fact, we see them all over Europe. So what does this trigger?
Clémence: You can see it on the graphs.
Nicolas Meilhan: Yes, you can see it on the graphs, but you can also see it in our nuclear power stations. In fact, what happens when a power station like Golfech disconnects from the grid? So, obviously, EDF is currently investigating. So these are just hypotheses. Everything we're saying is based on hypotheses. Well, what happens is that when there is a drop in frequency, the power station will go into automatic shutdown. And that's what happened. And when EDF-RTE sees that a French nuclear power plant goes into automatic shutdown for an event linked to Spain, it says to itself, ah, maybe I'll... No, I'm saying, maybe I'll cut the connection.
Because the Spanish network is leaving, diverging with oscillations. I'm going to protect the rest of Europe and I'm going to cut the interconnection. Except that when you cut the interconnection, you protect Europe, but you send Spain to the wall. So that's one hypothesis. Obviously, we'll have to wait and see what happens and whether it's confirmed by the analyses. It may take a little time, because the European Commission has talked about six months.
You have to realise that, obviously, what is certain is that the proportion of renewables meant that the network was very unstable, that we had very few machines to absorb frequency variations. And so, if you like, this is a real blow to the European Commission's religion. They're known for their transparency, so it may take a little time for them to admit that we're up to no good.
Clémence: Well, it's very interesting what you've told us. And now, let's draw the moral from this story. Because you've given us quite a few points, we need to go back over each of them. Firstly, the issue of renewable energy, and how this time it was the weak link, and the issue of interconnection. Because, obviously, we're all a bit dependent on each other.
Nicolas Meilhan: We're all dependent on each other, so we're dependent when there's too much, we're dependent when there's not enough. Roughly speaking, when there's not enough, we count on our neighbour to have more, but except that the neighbour also counts on us, so that's where we can have a problem.
Clémence: And when we have too much, everyone else has too much too, that's the sun?
Nicolas Meilhan: In Europe, there are two major production bases for solar energy: Germany, because they have installed a lot, and Spain, because they have a lot of sun. So we are all interconnected. We can't reason country by country. In fact, we really need to look at Europe as a whole. We are, after all, in France. This is one of the reasons for the stability of the network, because we have the production down there, we have the nuclear power stations. Without France, the grid would go straight down.
Clémence: It's really the French nuclear power stations that today, in the end, we'll say, sorry, I'm using a vulgar term, that calm the grid, that stabilise the grid.
Nicolas Meilhan: Well, if we'd listened to François Hollande and closed half our power stations, things would be a lot more complicated.
Clémence: More variable and therefore more dangerous.
Nicolas Meilhan: So, no, no, that's really the big problem. I was watching, having fun yesterday, because I spent a lot of time, in particular... preparing this interview for France Info, which was cancelled 30 minutes beforehand, even though I was already there.
Clémence: Yes, why was it cancelled?
Nicolas Meilhan: Because, you know, they do double booking, so they had booked another expert, perhaps a little more macro-compatible. They weren't going to criticise the renewable energy, perhaps? Well, obviously, as they're his clients, and there's a bit of a conflict of interest, he avoids criticising them, yes, of course.
Clémence: As you say, we haven't yet reached the red card stage, but we can get there. And, as we said, let's revisit the issue of land collection.
Nicolas Meilhan: I'd like to say it again, because yesterday all the media were interested, and the only question they had to ask was what M6 asked me: could this happen in France? Yes, and maybe it almost did and we came very close. Yes, it can happen in France. And yes, it could be worse. As the head of RTE said yesterday, it can take 12 or 16 hours to restore a network. That's a very good performance. It's actually very good news. So it can take much longer.
When you had a blackout in Texas, it took a week. So try, for those who are in doubt, I had no power at home for 3 days, and I was a bit of a player, I didn't choose, but I did it for a week. So give it a try, for those of you in doubt, I didn't have any power at home for 3 days, and I was a bit of a player, I didn't choose, but I did it on 20 December. It's not funny, because at 5 o'clock there's no light. No stove, no fridge, no washing machine, no phone, no TV, no nothing. It's weird. Of course, you can still work moving around.
Clémence: Yes, that's right. We're going to talk about France again, because the situation in France is a bit different. How is it in danger? In what way is it perhaps a little less than the others? If we start by looking at the issue of renewable energy, in any case, here it was solar energy, and it could be wind energy in other areas, or wind energy may not pose the same problem, because there is less downtime.
Nicolas Meilhan: You can disconnect wind power, roughly speaking, in inverted commas. The problem is between controllable and non-controllable energies. Wind power can be disconnected. The Germans do a lot of that too. You disconnect a farm and it's gone. Maybe one day we'll put in electrolysers and make hydrogen. For the moment, it's too expensive.
Clémence: Is solar energy harder to disconnect?
Nicolas Meilhan: Yes, because it's more diffuse. In fact, you may have solar panels on your roof. Are we going to fool you? No, you don't. But it's much more diffuse, so it's more complicated. If you have large farms, it's easy to disconnect a large production facility. But with the smaller ones, it's more complicated. Nevertheless, we're still capping the grid in France, and I'm telling you, whether it's Sunday or Monday, we've shut down our solar production facilities in France to absorb German electricity, which was sold at 0 euros per megawatt.
Clémence: We need to come back to that, because it's completely crazy.
Nicolas Meilhan: In fact, why not have renewable energies? If it can replace gas and coal in some countries, as has been done in part in the UK and Germany, why not? But we have to be careful, because at the moment there are few means of production. Maybe one day we'll have more batteries. In California, for example, they have installed a lot of batteries. Then the price of electricity went through the roof, but they installed batteries. Maybe one day we'll have hydrogen. But for the moment, as long as we don't have a storage solution, in fact, continuing to accelerate as we are doing...
To add to this, while we want to multiply capacity in France, I can't remember whether it's by two or three, and solar power plants are already being cut. They're betting everything on the fact that electricity consumption is going to rise - that's a very big issue - when in fact it's been falling since 2009, if you like. So why is that? Well, it goes back to the subject of
ArcelorMittal. When ArcelorMittal leaves, what does it do? It consumes less electricity.
When you deindustrialise a country, consumption goes down. So if you like, we want to achieve carbon neutrality and get rid of fossil fuels at the same time. But to do that, we're going to add intermittent energies that we don't need, which will multiply the price of electricity by 2 or 3. And then we're surprised. Well, that's strange. When you multiply the price of electricity by 2, people consume less. No, that's called elasticity, it's not weird at all, it's perfectly normal.
Clémence: Whereas if we focus on French nuclear power stations...
Nicolas Meilhan: So, let's talk about solutions now, because there are solutions in France. It's quite simple. We have one advantage: our nuclear power plants, which have been paid for and amortised by EDF. And we have these power stations, which are originally American licences, Westinghouse. The same plants in the United States last up to 80 years. So the only thing we have to try to do is to make sure that our power plants last as long as possible, 80 years.
[Discussion of the market follow]
TO THE NEW ENERGY CORRUPTION SCHEME THAT SPLASHES THE GOVERNMENT WITH THE GREAT #BLACKOUT 
AND RENEWABLE ENERGIES 
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