zlacker

>>Capsta+(OP)
> French day-ahead power fell to -€5.76 a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany’s equivalent contract dropped to €7.64.

If true - how fast could a new transmission line from France to Germany pay for itself?

>>bell-c+Y
Germany already buys electricity from France. The cost mentioned above are the subsidized charges by the EDF to the french government.

Germans would get the full cost which is much higher than the quoted price here. Besides nuclear power is not flexible enough to amp it up and down according to demand (unlike coal or petrocarbon industries).

>>ganesh+U9
French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3].

TLDR More interconnector capacity, battery storage, and renewables needed (my analysis).

[1] https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...

[2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=fal...

[3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-extends-li...

>>toomuc+4a
Which theyve actually used very very rarely.

Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment.

This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).

>>pydry+nb
It's untrue, it is used everyday on all our Gen3/Gen3+ reactors (our Gen2 are able to do it too, but it does cost a lot as core monitoring is more costly for them)

I've found this https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-... even if it isn't really clear, you have a graph that show you a typical year on a french reactor, and load followinf the german reactors used to do over a day.