French do not accept to pay 2.6 billion euros for the necessary reinforcement of their own network
The ministers with the protection of energy in the Spanish and Portuguese governments, Sara Muñoz and Graça Carvalho, wrote a joint letter to the European Commission on “the urgent need to accelerate the completion of electrical interconnections” between the Iberian and French peninsula.
The problem is that the construction of a underwater cable in the Gulf of Biscaia, in direct current, is only ongoing, and therefore without any influence on the prevention of blackouts. “This technology, in the current state of implementation, does not reduce the risk of blackout, nor increases the dynamic safety of our network,” explains José Luís Pinto de Sá, jubilated professor at Instituto Superior Technical and researcher in the area of electricity. One of the two existing relevant interconnections is also in direct current, irrelevant in cases of severe disturbance of networks, such as that occurred on April 28.
The Iberian network records peaks of intermittent sources in renewable, solar and wind, never seen in other parts of the world, which already raises suspicions of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchéz. On April 17, at 11:05 am, in Spain, the wind and solar generation reached, added, 100.06% of demand. Eleven days later, the blackout went. “In the current state of technology, we cannot live with 100% intermittent renewables,” warns Pinto de Sá.
The French resist new aerial connections of very high voltage through the pyrenees, with the Iberian Peninsula. “The various projects must be addressed to each other, with priority for the Gulf of Biscaia,” writes the French regulator L’Energie Commission of L’Energie (CRE) in May 2024.
Negative cost-benefit analysis
New lines of very high tension in the pyrenees, or along the coast, have the opposition of local environmentalists and populations, because they threaten biodiversity and landscape. This is the main reason for the use of buried cables, or submarines, despite its ineffectiveness in the resistance to network disturbances.
The French admit that new aerial interconnections can be discussed, but with 2040 as a temporal horizon. They warn, however, that “the cost-benefit analyzes performed did not show that the benefits exceed costs, namely due to congestion in the French network, the significant needs to reinforce the French network and the important problems of local acceptability.”
CRE, in a recent report, published on March 21 this year, estimates that a new air interconnection would imply supplementary costs, in the reinforcement of the French network itself, of at least 2.6 billion euros. Now France is a major exporter of electricity for countries like Germany, Italy and Switzerland. As a rule, when he is importing from Spain, he is simultaneously to export to these countries. Therefore, the French regulator considers that its network essentially serves “fled” to Iberian renewable production. With this argument, it rejects to make the cost of reinforcing their infrastructure, indispensable for new interconnections.
The solution, within the European Union, will be the distribution of 2.6 billion euros to other countries. The cost of the interconnection itself, in very high voltage, will be the second installment of the endeavor. Consumers are in danger of being called to comply with all these investments in network access tariffs, the invoices.
What’s worse is that the new transpirenic air interconnection would still be insufficient to ensure the purpose of power and stability of the power grid. “We are talking about 2.5 GW, in addition to the submarine cable under construction in the Gulf of Biscaia, totaling 7.5 GW, well below the 10% claimed as necessary, and only there for 2035 or 2040,” recalls Pinto de Sá.
