In a circular soon sent to the prefects, the government has drawn up a list of instructions to be applied in the event that load shedding takes place this winter. A solution intended to fight against tensions on the electrical network but which would lead to power cuts which could last several hours.
The government is preparing for winter power cuts. So much so that the Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will send the prefects a circular containing a whole bunch of instructions to be applied in case of load shedding. If this solution were to be adopted, power outages will occur during consumption peaks. They could even last more than two hours due to the time required to restart the relay antennas. The emergency services will then be unreachable. by the traditional telephone route and the internet will no longer be available. The network will also be disrupted during the recovery.
To guard against such a scenario, the prefects must, first and foremost, encourage the populations and all the local players to show restraint in their electricity consumption. They will then have to ensure that a physical presence 24 hours a day is ensured in the town halls in order to direct the population to the emergency services. In addition, a crisis cell will have to be set up. Two hours before the cuts but also two hours after, the human presence will also have to be reinforced in the centers receiving emergency calls but also within the gendarmerie brigades or in the police stations.
No school on the entire half-day concerned
The prefects will also have to encourage the population to stand alongside vulnerable people in order to refer them to the emergency services. On the school component, the establishments will not welcome the pupils for the whole of the half-day concerned by a possible load shedding. All the areas affected by these cuts will be known the evening before on the Ecowatt site, the RTE platform.
Finally, note that the decrees of the prefects will be made confidential in order to avoid any risk of espionage. Awareness campaigns for businesses and communities will have to be set up. “Media will also be made available to support your educational efforts on social networks in particular”, specifies the circular. The government nevertheless recalled that these load shedding would intervene “as a last resort” and that it was an “exceptional” measure.