Although very rich, Switzerland fears that it will be without electricity this winter if French nuclear reactors remain closed and if Berlin, due to the war in Ukraine, reduces its exports of electricity to gas. In summer, Switzerland, Europe’s water tower thanks to its hundreds of hydroelectric plants, exports electricity, but in winter it is the opposite. Usually this is not a problem, but since the war in Ukraine, Russian gas has stopped flowing into Europe.
However, Switzerland, which has no gas reserves on its soil, imports electricity produced with gas in Germany in winter, facing reduced Russian gas deliveries this year. “The other problem is that on the French side, half of the nuclear park is stopped” due in particular to the problem of corrosion, explained to AFP Stéphane Genoud, professor of energy management at the great university school HES-SO. This combination of factors raises fears of electricity shortages.
nuclear exit
The commissioning at the beginning of September of a powerful pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant in Finhaut-Emosson, near Mont-Blanc in the Swiss Alps, 600 meters below the rock and at an altitude of 1,700 meters, will not radically change the situation. In a classic check dam, once the lake is emptied, production stops.
In this plant (named Nant De Drance), none of that. Located between two dams at different heights, it takes advantage of episodes of overproduction of the electrical network of wind or solar origin, to pump water from the lower basin to the upper one. A water that releases at times of high demand for electricity. “It’s like a huge battery. We can regenerate electricity at the right time, during the daily peaks in the morning or in the afternoon,” Robert Gleitz, from the management of Alpiq, one of the plant’s shareholder companies, told AFP.
The plant “comes at an opportune moment and will help accelerate the energy transition” towards renewable energies, he explained during the visit to the facility. But he points out that these types of plants can only sustain the electricity market for short periods since they do not generate electricity when the water is returned to the upper basin.
“In the current situation, it usefully complements a renewable electricity production that is still too low,” Nicolas Wüthrich, from the organization Pro Natura, told AFP. Like other NGOs, he particularly deplores Switzerland’s delay in its energy transition, as the country decided to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. As of 2020, Switzerland only had around 40 wind farms.
cuts expected
According to Boris Salak, an expert at the Federal Institute for Forestry, Snow and Landscape Research, some 750 wind turbines and solar panels on a third of rooftops would be needed to meet the government’s energy strategy targets for 2050. 2021, even before the war in Ukraine, the Swiss organization for electricity supply in case of crisis stressed that the risk of electricity shortages was already “high” in the country.
In recent days, the government has called not to dramatize while claiming to prepare for power cuts. The president of the Federal Electricity Commission, Werner Luginbühl, warned that outages of several hours are expected. The Swiss are flocking to generators and solar panels for balconies, while left-wing parties are calling for swift action.
Some, like the economist Stéphane Garelli, expect soft measures to encourage people to consume less electricity. Stéphane Genoud considers it likely that Bern will introduce more restrictive measures such as “quotas for large consumers” of electricity, such as large companies, or power cuts. But, he hopes, “if the French manage to restart the reactors, if Putin doesn’t bother and if it’s not cold, we miss a shortage or a blackout.”
Source: BFM TV
