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Renewables output allows Spain to increase power exports to France

London (Platts)--7Feb2012/748 am EST/1248 GMT

The increased role of renewables facilities in Spain's power generation mix has enabled the country to send up to 1,400 MW per hour to France, where record levels of demand are putting a strain on the system, data shows.

France has been receiving above 1,000 MW per hour from Spain since Thursday, data from Red Electrica shows, with no available power capacity for power imports to Spain.

France has traditionally been a net importer of power from Germany, Belgium and Spain, a situation that reversed in 2011 when French export volumes to these markets were 10.8 TWh, 7.9 TWh and 4.5 TWh, respectively.

Spanish wind power output has remained between 9-13 GW since Thursday, according to Aeolis forecasting services and Red Electrica, covering nearly one-third of total power demand. Output is normally around 4-6 GW.

As a result of the extra output, Spain was exporting up to 7% of its total power production Monday to neighboring countries, up 3.6 percentage points compared with the same point on January 30.

Spanish exports to neighboring countries totaled over 6% of power generation Saturday and Sunday, according to Red Electrica, up 5 percentage points compared with January 28.

Despite temperatures falling below seasonal norms and lifting Spanish power demand above 40 GW, day-ahead prices have steadily declined as wind output has strengthened. Spanish baseload OTC power for delivery Tuesday was last heard at Eur51.90/MWh around 1200 GMT.

Meanwhile, French Tuesday baseload power was heard trading as high as Eur155/MWh and the peak contract reached Eur200/MWh. French power demand has surged in recent days, driving up imports, as bitter winter weather has gripped most of Europe, with France most affected due to the large number of households with electric heating.

French power demand is forecast to hit 98.2 GW for hour 19 Tuesday, 1.5 GW above the all-time record of 96.7 GW, according to grid operator RTE, with Monday's peak demand expected to reach 97.7 GW.

Meanwhile, Spanish imports from Portugal have been cut to just the peak morning and evening hours, with exports averaging 1,000 MW per hour during the remaining hours. Spain is also currently exporting an additional 300 MW per hour to Morocco.

Article continues below... www.platts.com

hi Shadow!

@dean thx. nine are left, 8 are shut down.

en.wikipedia.org interesting article on Germany power... Angela Merkel,, PhD in chemistry sure seems to be changing the course there for power... @ Edano

@elainekirk it seems half of the world is borrowing power to france.

oops @ Edano..

this was in the wikipedia article... now I'm confused .Merkel stated that Germany "[does not] only want to renounce nuclear energy by 2022, we also want to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent and double our share of renewable energies, from about 17 percent today to then 35 percent". The chancellor, who holds a PhD in chemistry, noted the "helplessness" of Japan to manage the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
...

@Edano... is there a huge supply of coal in Germany?

www.cdu.de here it is physics, in other sources (the university) it's chemistry. she calls herself "physicist".

@Peter little bit oil in north sea we have. :)

@Peter i think i have seen a graphic that there is oil everywhere in the world, but most of the fields are (yet) too expensive to exploit. but it will be done with improving technology and further demand.

ty @ lilly

@lillymunster i think tepco experiments with the cooling rate. they did the same before with #1.

i think they make experiments to determine the state of the corium (and the location maybe).