RTE has undertaken maintenance works as a result of the damage occurring on the 400 kV Argia-Cantegrit line and reduced the transmission capacity in both directions. RTE shared communications on the subject of outages and their impacts on transmission capacity on 10 July 2019 and 4 September 2019.

Since the 2019 delivery year, the contribution of interconnections (excluding the border with Switzerland) to France’s security of supply has been taken into account "explicitly" in the capacity mechanism, which means that it takes the form of capacity guarantees. For the 2019 and 2020 delivery years, as communicated on 17 June of this year, this "explicit” taking into account is done using a “streamlined” procedure for all of the interconnections concerned, meaning RTE places capacity guarantees for sale according to the statistical contribution of the various borders to the security of supply.

As communicated on 4 September 2019, the damage to the 400kV Cantegrit-Argia-Hernani Interconnection cable led to a reduced electricity exchange capacity from Spain to France, both during and following the maintenance works. A reduced exchange capacity can potentially lead to a decrease in the level of capacity guarantees for the France - Spain border, in accordance with the capacity mechanism terms and conditions. For the year 2019, the decrease in the level of capacity guarantees will depend on the PP2 days notified over the November to December 2019 period. Under the most likely assumptions of notified PP2 days, no impact is foreseen on the effective certification level of the France-Spain border over 2019. However, over the 2020 delivery year, the decrease in the actual certification level of the France-Spain border would be 200 MW, dropping from a border contribution of 2200MW to 2000MW. For this 2020 delivery year, the total volume of guarantees corresponding to the contribution of all interconnections has thus dropped from 6700 to 6500 MW.

To account for the expected decrease in the actual certification level of the France - Spain border for the 2020 year, RTE is now conducting a downward rebalancing of its level of certified capacities by 200 MW. This rebalancing does not change the remuneration principles previously approved by the CRE in its deliberation no. 2019-133 of Thursday 20 June 2019. All of the capacity guarantees corresponding to the contribution of interconnections for the 2020 delivery year will be put up for sale by RTE during the last session of the auction held by EPEX Spot preceding the start of the delivery year. This auction is scheduled for 12 December 2019. These capacity guarantees will be offered for sale without a reserve price.

To learn more about the taking into account of cross-border capacity contributions, RTE provides the following link:

• The Capacity Mechanism terms and conditions V3.
• Report on the evolution of the set of rules for incorporating cross-border interconnections of the European electricity transmission system into the French Capacity Mechanism.

16 octobre 2019