The impacts of electrification – the example of France
A number of “100% renewable” studies foresee wholesale electrification as the best way to cut emissions. In this post I compare load curves from three European countries where electric heating is not widely used (Spain, Germany and Poland) with one where it is (France). The annual load curves for Spain, Germany and Poland do not show large seasonal load variations or high winter peak loads, but because of electric heating the load curve for France shows both large seasonal variations and a strong winter peak. France’s electric heaters will therefore have offset a substantial tonnage of CO2 emissions at the expense of making the grid more difficult to manage. Considerations such as the performance of France’s nuclear fleet and the impact of France’s electric heaters on “demand response” are also discussed.
Figure 1 shows the locations of the four countries considered. They have a combined population of 235 million, a combined GDP of $8.1 trillion and cover an area of 1.8 million square kilometers:
Figure 1: Country locations
A few basic statistics are listed in Table 1 for reference:
As discussed in numerous previous posts, matching electricity supply to demand (load) 24/365 in a country where a high fraction of generation is provided by intermittent renewables is problematic if not impossible. Regardless of the generation mix, however, the problem will usually be lessened if the annual load curve does not show significant seasonal variations. Three of the four countries considered, Poland, Spain and Germany, show no large seasonal variations except during the Christmas/New Year holiday season in Germany. (All the data used in this post are from the P-F Bach hourly data for 2015except where otherwise specified:)
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