ENTSO-EENTSO-E’s Winter Outlook 2018/2019 finds that Europe’s supply of electricity is secured under normal conditions. In case of a cold spell, the situation will need monitoring in an area including Belgium, France, Northern–Italy, Central–Northern Italy and Slovenia. This monitoring will especially be needed in January and February in case of outages combined with low wind and solar.
The unforeseen and delayed maintenance of generation units in Belgium announced in September 2018 and the respective countermeasures identified by the Belgian authorities have been considered. Special monitoring of the adequacy situation in Europe and reinforced information sharing are ensured on a weekly basis at the technical level among TSOs through the Regional Security Coordinators and at political level under the European Electricity Coordination Group which gathers the European Commission, EU member states, regulators and technical experts.
The Winter Outlook looks at a series of variables that are important to consider when analysing security of supply such as hydro reservoirs, gas supply and change in generation. At the start of this winter, the level of hydro reservoirs in Europe is near average and a coordinated assessment with ENTSO-E’s gas counterpart, ENTSOG, confirmed that a disruption to gas supply routes during a cold spell would not endanger electricity supply in Europe. This year’s edition of the Winter Outlook shows the decrease of conventional generation is continuing but that the increase in renewables installed generation capacity is higher than last winter.
As usual, the Winter Outlook is released with a review of what happened during the previous summer. Summer 2018 was marked by temperatures much higher than average, especially in Northern and Eastern Europe. This led to some local electricity supply disruptions in Czech Republic, Croatia and Greece.
Press contacts:
Claire Camus, Head of Communication, T: 0032476975093, cca@entsoe.eu
Léa Dehaudt, Communication Advisor, T: +32484766904, lde@entsoe.eu,