франция, 95% электричества

[juan_gandhi]

 I've just learned that in 2024 95% of electricity produced in France is carbon-free. It's nuclear, fyi.

Comments

[sassa_nf]

Nuclear power plants can increase output approximately 40MW per minute. So going from minimum output to maximum for 1.5GW plant takes hours.

Load spikes is like everyone comes home and turns the kettle on (plugs their hybrid car, turns the TV on, goes to shower, etc). You need to ramp up in minutes, not hours. Hydro and fossil fuel plants can do that. Others can't by design and because of the physical processes involved.

[mopexod]

On a scale of France these are not spikes but rather a normal daily cycle with a well predicted hour-to-hour variations.
Considering that France was ~70% nuclear for the last decades, they know how to deal with this.

[sassa_nf]

I don't know enough, I can only retell what my friend from a nuclear power plant told me, and what I read about the future of the power supply.

One might wonder why 70% remains 70% for decades.

I understand nukes can cope with seasonal changes in demand, but not so much with daily variations. They are good as a backbone, but not so good for coping with variation.

[mopexod]

If we take a look at actual electricity consumption of France, we see daily variations of ~25-30% :
https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/electricity-consumption-france

This may explain 70% level of nuclear power generation: it does not require any throttling during a typical day, if other ways of generation can be easily adjusted.

I thought that daily variation is a lot lower.

[sassa_nf]

That's a cool graph, thanks.

I am actually surprised that the consumption low is 3.45am, and up to that time it remains pretty high, like the French don't sleep much.