Millions of people were affected by major power outages in Spain and Portugal on Monday, but only a portion of the nearby southwest France region experienced disruption.
France’s rapid disconnect from the Spanish grid escaped the country’s more serious impact and resulted in a few minutes of halt.
Now many mind questions can do that Large grid failure Will it happen in France?
According to experts and French government officials, the risk is relatively low, but it does not exist.
The last major incident in France was in 1978.
France has not experienced a nationwide blackout of this scale since December 1978, when the high voltage line at the eastern station of Moulte et Mosel broke down and plunged the country into the darkness for several hours.
Today, its electrical infrastructure is much more robust; Interconnections with neighboring countries And multiple protective layers.
On Tuesday morning, France provided an emergency supply of 1,500 megawatts to help stabilize the Spanish grid, Jean-Paul Roubin, customer and operations director at RTE, France’s power grid operator, explained in a press release sent to EuroNews.
Additionally, government officials say hospitals, nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructures are equipped with backup generators that can operate independently for several days.
There is also France Dedicated quick response The Force is known as the Force (Force D’Intervention Rapideélectricité). It consists of 2,500 experts who can unfold within minutes of such an event.
According to Alicia Bassière, he is a researcher and member of the Powdev project, which studies the resilience of French Power Grid. It’s still too early Give a definite answer as to whether France can avoid similar power outages.
“We don’t know exactly what caused the power outage in Spain yet. It’s difficult to say whether it could happen in France without knowing the cause,” Bassiere explained in an interview with Euronows.
“Spain remains an isolated system on the peninsula. For example, both Spain and Portugal have less support than foreign France to share electricity to meet their needs.”
The events on Monday highlighted the effectiveness of cross-border electricity networks in Europe, Alicia Bassière explained.
As the Spanish grid faded, the French network automatically disconnected for an hour before gradually reconnecting to power Spain, preventing the outage from expanding.
“We can call interconnections through our neighbors. Easier than Spain, we are neighbors with more countries. There are many safety mechanisms to avoid power outages, and there are a lot of energy that can be quickly injected into the network if necessary.”
“I’ve already seen yesterday that if something goes wrong, then the European network is very good at isolating problems,” Bassiere said.
“So there was no spread of power outages, and in Basque Country, there were several speeds that lasted about an hour.”
She adds that France’s dependence on nuclear power provides another protective measure. “We have a more robust nuclear system.
There is also a pre-emption agreement with industrial factories, which can find energy consumption on demand to balance the grid in the event of a blackout, the researchers said.
What should I do if an outage occurs?
In the unlikely event of widespread power outages, authorities advise citizens to prepare.
“If this happens, prepare an emergency kit for medicines, canned food, water, electric radios, battery-powered radios, and more,” suggested Alicia Bassière.
“It’s also important to have cash reserves. It’s essential not to panic. Crisis management plans existed, existed, worked, and worked in Spain yesterday.”
She also advised against unnecessary overloading emergency telephone lines.
“It’s unlikely to last more than 12 hours, as we saw in Spain yesterday.”
