Updated: New French nuclear extensions prompt record spikes

The extension of outages to four reactors at the nuclear plants Tricastin and Bugey sent the French power market into a spin on Thursday, as contracts continued to break new highs.

The four reactors, which have a combined capacity of 3.6GW and are all subject to additional controls on the composition of the steel in steam reactors, are now scheduled to remain offline until the end of the year. They were previously scheduled to return to the grid on 30 November, 19 December and 23 December.

The December ’16 Baseload spiked from €113.00/MWh after the first hour of trading on Thursday, to €138.00/MWh in little over an hour, as updates were made to the RTE transparency website.

The Cal ’17 Baseload contract jumped from €46.60/MWh to €49.00/MWh in the same period. This would make it second biggest session-on-session gain in 2016.

Tight

Fears are also mounting that the French power system will struggle to meet consumption next week, as sub-average temperatures are forecast to push peak demand to 83GW on 9 November. That is 5.6GW less than the highest demand on record so far in 2016, on 18 January.

Supply prospects are expected to be unusually tight, however, due to poor nuclear availability, which currently stands at 43.2GW. It is scheduled to increase to 45.5GW by the start of next week, lifting availability to around 72% of combined capacity, but this will depend on the return of 905MW and 915MW reactors Chinon 3 and Cruas 3.

Neither are impacted by the ongoing safety review of steam generators but outages have still been extended on multiple occasions and the reactors were initially scheduled to return on 9 and 25 October.

“It’s quite normal to see ramping-up being postponed in the last minute but we seem to see more of it this year, probably due to tighter controls,” one trader said.

A 24-hour extension to the partial outage of the 1.3GW Cattenom 4 also added to nerves.

Hydro

In order to fill the gap, the French power system has a 6.1GW fleet of gas-fired plants and 2.9GW coal-fired fleet, though the latter is reduced by 580MW until 9 January due to a long-term maintenance.

A similar supply crunch occurred on 7-10 February, when consumption reached 102GW. A 6.7GW fleet of fuel oil plants were then used to cover the demand spike but capacity has since declined to 5.3GW, while two units, with a combined capacity of 1.3GW, are scheduled to remain offline beyond next week.

Imports were covering 10% of French demand at the time, but tight supply margins in neighbouring countries could limit inbound flows. France is already importing during most peak hours on the German, UK and Spanish borders and the export balance has also dropped considerable on the Italian border, according to data by RTE. This stands contrast with exchanges on the Swiss border, where exports increased month-on-month in October.

“Switzerland is a bit special as one of the nuclear reactors will be offline to February, while there has been very little precipitation and weak hydro availability,” the trader said.

Net imports from the UK has also turned to net exports in recent days, during the periods of highest demand in hours 17 and 20 due to exceptionally high within-day prices in the UK during these hours.

It’s going to be very tight next week, but increases in hydro production are likely cover the gap, a second trader said.

Hydro reservoirs are already low, however, down by 13% compared to last year, which recorded the lowest annual hydro production since 2011. French reservoirs is currently producing at around 2GW at its highest, compared to a total capacity of 8GW. joachim.moxon@icis.com