Feed-back from experience at EDF (Electricité de France) following the storms of December 1999

I. The sequence of events

Weather maps describe the course of events: a first storm on 26 December hit the whole of northern France with 200 kph winds, up to 212 kph at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours later the same phenomenon repeated itself in the south of France. These phenomena were absolutely exceptional.

1. The customers

The damage was significant : over 3 400 000 customers saw their power supply cut and by the morning of 28 December the lights were flashing red in nearly all the départements. Between the 1st and 7th of January we succeeded in putting back into operation the majority of installations that had been hit, but there remained all the same one area that was still experiencing serious difficulties, essentially in the South West, the Poitou-Charentes region and the southern Massif Central (130 000 customers needing to be connected in 9 départements on 7 January at 6 p.m.).

2. The damages

Contrary to the impression we had at the time, damages were limited as regards the French grid because according to the type of network considered (from low to very high voltage) only between 0.4 % and 1 % of the network had been damaged. Nevertheless, just as with a blood circulation system, one only needs to cut 1 % of the veins to be in a very serious condition… From the users' point of view, the situation after the two storms was quickly restored in the first few days because in a large number of cases it had been easy to restore power.

3. Human resources

a. Internal mobilisation

As far as we were concerned, we mobilised 35,000 people. However the mobilisation was very extensive and very intense: people working on the networks supporting the companies, the companies themselves, international aid with the support of 1,800 people and the efficient help provided by the army (which the media did not speak much about: 4,835 men of which 507 Civil Security, 107 firemen and 3,311 soldiers). In fact two soldiers paid with their life the help they provided.

b. External mobilisation

We also witnessed a strong mobilisation on the part of the suppliers we work with, the call-centre and all the associations involved (politicians' associations, consumer associations, professional associations…) The action of all these players was also somewhat neglected by the media. The latter did not mention all the businesses, in particular the companies doing the line work.

c. Foreign aid

In total, some fifteen countries participated, with a stronger representation coming from those closest to France: Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and Belgium (1,800 people, 40 companies). Equipment was also made available: power generator sets, large perforators, cables, gondolas, convectors, heavy duty drilling machines). A number of Moroccans and Tunisians are in fact still at work but little has been said about them.

II. Feed-back of experience

1. Organising the feed-back of experience

1. L'organisation du retour d'expérience

We asked each of our units in the field and each of our divisions to establish their own feed-back of experience. Eight topic managers analysed the following information: human issues, communication, customers, information systems, crisis management, etc. In order to provide the best exchange of important information, we set up a dedicated Internet site and fax line. We received hundreds of contributions both from company staff and also from private individuals wishing to express their views.

These contributions focused mainly on a short period (immediately following re-supply for the majority of customers). We really perceived a full contribution on the part of those who had experienced these events and wished to express themselves.

2. Lessons drawn from the feed-back of experience

a. The management of crisis periods

- Information systems

This crisis period highlighted first of all the importance of information systems that make it possible to establish a link with the customers. We had an incredible piece of luck inasmuch as we were able to benefit in part from the work done in view of the year 2000, because we had just implemented very high performance computer systems and information management and retrieval systems. However there was still one missing element: a direct connection with the customers. In this area we received considerable help from the local political authorities. We were therefore able to measure the impact of the absence of a system establishing permanent contact individually with each client. This is one of the projects we shall be pursuing.

- Preparing for crisis situations

Based on the December experience, we decided to dedicate more time to preparing for crises in our organisations and in our methods of preparation. We were very well prepared in the nuclear field. However, this crisis, which was quite different from those for which we had prepared, caught us napping. We shall therefore be systematically setting up emergency committees and crisis plans in all our units, particularly in all the centres. Some elements of this exist already: the local crisis plans of the DEGS. We shall be perfecting these and will be organising crisis exercises which we are planning to extend at a European level, inasmuch as the intervention of other Europeans, as well as of Moroccans and Tunisians, proved to be extremely useful. In fact an international team should also be set up.

- Communication

Here, the lesson that we can draw from this crisis is the following: communication works if it is continuous, factual and visible. Local politicians played a major role in this area: they were permanently communicating with us about what was physically happening in their constituency, they were also making contact with our customers and were often informing those in difficulty much better than we were able to do.

Another lesson in terms of communication is that it is essential to call on all available resources, from the most modern (in particular Internet, which was put hard to work throughout this period) to the most simple. I remember having visited towns in the southern Massif Central that had been cut off for a number of days: it was the local garde champêtre (Å municipal rural policeman) who was communicating the information. Finally, the longer the crisis, the more we need to organise ourselves close to the field, because at this stage the problems to be solved are for the most part individual cases.

- The role of the politicians

The institutional relays (local authorities and politicians) play an absolutely key role, as we have already underlined.

Without them we would have no permanent contact with the field. We must therefore absolutely maintain and develop such links, and not only with a view to solving exceptional emergency situations. We cannot become allies in times of crisis if we are not already allies outside of such times.

- The quality of the in-house work

We have clearly seen that the crisis modified work relations. The role of managers was shown to be essential. They kept the whole operation together and we realised that the best among them knew how to facilitate their team's work by making the field accessible to them. This really brought the men closer. We shall be integrating this notion of crisis management in the training we provide for our staff and particularly when training managers.

- Medical and psychological aspects

This is a special point that we underestimated with respect to what we had seen in Quebec, for example. We recorded, both among our customers and among our staff, cases of exhausted individuals who had worked very hard and were suffering from depression. In fact we had to learn to manage a large number of such situations, something for which we were not prepared. Hydro-Quebec had indeed warned us about this but obviously we did not take sufficient notice of their warnings.

b. Lessons for non critical periods

- Changes in the Company

The first idea that we shall seek to put into practice is the transposition, into the day-to-day life of the Company, both internally and in its external relations, of the great spirit of mobilisation that was seen in the December 1999 crisis. A debate is currently taking place over this issue, particularly with the trade union organisations.

- Problems of organisation and reorganisation

The management of this crisis produced two contradictory effects which are worth analysing. The mutualisation of a certain number of tasks proved to be very beneficial in certain areas, particularly for the platforms for spare parts, purchases, etc. This mutualisation was a real source of time-saving and efficiency. Yet in a number of cases the result was exactly the opposite: certain mutualisations resulted in people being taken away from the field. We need to find the right balance between a concern for efficiency in terms of organisation &endash; with the aim of concentrating resources and being less present &endash; with another type of efficiency, which consists of being alongside the persons concerned by the problems to be solved. This is an issue which deserves our attention right away.

III. The principal decisions and objectives

1. The decisions

They are of three orders :

• If ever such a situation was to happen again, the top priority would be to restore power to the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time. This requires an intervention similar to that of medical emergency teams, for it is well and truly an emergency that we are dealing with.

• In addition, one key challenge is that of maintaining competencies. In this area, the difficulties we have to face are of two kinds. First of all, the evolution of the electrical system is tending towards a breaking-up of the system rather than a concentration. Moreover, the evolution of the technologies can become the source of unexpected difficulties. Last December, the damaged lines were overhead lines whereas the new networks tend to be essentially underground, 80 to 90 % of medium high voltage and 60 % of low voltage. This transformation is tending to make certain older technology competencies disappear. Yet these skills are nevertheless indispensable in cases where storms damage overhead lines. There is therefore a very real need to strike the right balance on this issue in the medium term.

• The third point, which without a doubt will be the most visible, consists of improving the resistance of the network to storms, which are a phenomenon that may well happen again.

2. Thes objectives

a. Objective n°1: restoring the power supply within a very short time and the tools that need to be developed in order to do this

If a similar storm was to happen within the next five years, we need to give ourselves an objective of being able to restore the power supply to 80 % of the persons affected within 24 hours, and to 95 % of persons within five days. However, in the recent events power was restored to 80 % of the people within roughly three days and to 95 % of the people within fifteen days. Our objective then is to divide the response time by two or by three, which supposes a very solid organisation. The first storm happened the day after Christmas, on a Sunday, in the dark, at six o'clock in the morning, at a very "sensitive" moment. We are giving ourselves the challenge to succeed in restoring power to 80 % of persons affected, even if the problem was to happen, for example, on Christmas Day. No structure, anywhere in the world, is as yet able meet such a challenge.

In order to do this we need to bring our efforts to bear on several points:

• The decision to create a rapid intervention force has been already made. We need to have personnel and equipment capable of facing situations such as that of December 1999, we need diagnostic instruments, etc. This requires a team that is able to intervene in an emergency; the electricians are working together to reach this objective. We shall be gradually working up to full capacity.

• We need to be able, thanks to appropriate IT systems, to have permanent direct contact with each customer, at any time, to know if his electrical supply is cut or not. The necessary technology already exists but remains to be implemented.

• We also need to develop decentralised production in certain areas. This is not a solution that can be generalised but it can sometimes be useful. We need therefore to study it in cooperation with the local politicians and be able to dispose of the tools to set it up.

• Being able to call on independent power generation sets proved to be particularly valuable during the December events. We therefore need to seriously consider this tool (both internally and together with the owners of the generator sets, particularly industrial clients).

b. Objective n°2 : maintaining competencies

The issue here is very clear: in ten years time, the electrical power supply system in France will no longer be provided by EDF alone but by a whole set of separate companies. What needs to be done so that such a diversified group can work together when confronted with very serious events? Finding the answer is doubtless a long-drawn-out task. The experience of the United Kingdom, where the electricity sector is already built around such a system, may provide us with some interesting indications.

c. Objective n°3 : the lines

Our approach is one that is done network by network.

- High and very high voltage

Here the chief problem is the burying of the lines, which when applied to HV, is technologically impossible, or at the very least extremely costly (1 km of 400 kV line costs about 3,500,000 Francs = 533 620 Euros; 1 km of 225 kV line costs about 1,700,000 Francs = 259 186 Euros; 1 km of 90 kV line costs about 800,000 Francs = 121 970 Euros). There is no truly realistic solution available in the short term.

We therefore need to concentrate our efforts in two directions:

• We need to design lines that can be easily repaired, so as to be able to restore them very quickly if they suffer damage. In certain cases that have been observed abroad, for example in the Netherlands, repair work appears to be easier. We need to draw on their experience.

• We need to make sure that source stations &endash; the large transformers at the connection points between the high and medium voltage networks &endash; are more or less always supplied by a line in case of storms.

We therefore need to make the lines more resistant.

- Medium voltage

Trees constitute the chief problem for medium voltage lines. Forests are developing regularly in our country. We noticed that more than nine out of ten damages came from trees falling. Trees fall on the lines or on their supporting pylons, and need to be untangled. We seem unable, contrary to what happens in Germany, to respect the distance prescriptions: we publish standards but we do not implement them correctly. We intend to gradually untangle trees from the medium voltage lines over the next fifteen years. In the end, either the lines will be buried, when that is possible, or they will be by-passing the forests.

It should however not be forgotten that some of the damage was also caused by toppled trees tearing up underground lines.

- Low voltage

Whatever the event causing the rupture, we need to guarantee a mesh network covering the whole national territory that ensures continuous electric power supply. To this end we have established a map of this network that includes 36,000 points on the territory where supply will always be ensured, even if not by the standard means. Such a network will require between nine and thirteen billion francs to provide high and very high voltage supply. Outlays will be more or less costly depending on the type of technology used. For medium voltage, we reckon that the expense will be around thirty billion francs and for low voltage between eight and ten billion francs.

Conclusion

If the response to the crisis situation caused by the two storms at the end of 1999 proved to be reasonably acceptable, or at least was not the object of bitter criticism by the media, a scrupulous analysis of this response has shown numerous aspects requiring significant progress if we want to attain a greater effectiveness should other such disasters happen.

Jean-Pierre BOURDIER

Environment Manager at EDF

Translation by Andrew WILES