French electricity transmission network operator RTE has published its forecasts on power supply through 2020: until 2020, France should have security margins (up to 4,800 MW per year) in terms of power supply.
On the supply side, power generation capacities will benefit from the availability of fuel-fired power units (that have been refurbished to comply with EU regulations) and of gas-fired CCGT power plants (no CCGT unit mothballed during the 2015-2016 winter). In addition, load shedding should continue to develop (more than 3 GW/year until 2020) while the new capacity mechanism should help additional capacities to emerge as of 2017. Renewable capacities are expected to continue to rise, contributing to improving power security margins: onshore wind capacity could increase by 1 GW per year through 2020, while the first offshore capacity will be commissioned as of 2019 (1 GW); solar PV capacity is expected to increase by 3.5 GW.
On the demand side, RTE expects power consumption to decline by 5.5 TWh until 2019 to 483 TWh.