Offsetting network losses

Enedis is continually offsetting its distribution network’s losses based on medium- and short-term forecasts. To ensure that enough energy is available to offset these losses, Enedis purchases electricity from both long-term and spot wholesale energy markets.

What is meant by energy “loss”?

There are 2 types of network electricity losses:

Technical losses due to the heating of conductors and transformers during electricity transmission.
Non-technical losses in which energy consumed cannot be billed to an end user. Reasons for these losses include: imprecise or incorrect readings, fraud and human error.

Enedis’s total losses represent nearly 6% of energy transmitted through the network, or 20 TWh/year.

Energy report and loss evaluation

Enedis evaluates energy losses using a network energy report. The report calculates the difference between Enedis’s consumption load graphs and readings from all customers. It takes into account energy waste (or loss) due to electrical phenomena in circuits and transformers.

Losses are calculated using the following equation:

losses = a * (Enedis Network’s synchronous capacity )² + b * (Enedis Network’s synchronous capacity) + c

Two sets of coefficients (a, b, c) are used. One applies to weekdays and the other to bank holidays and weekends.

Offsetting losses

When the electricity market was opened up to competition, responsibility for offsetting losses was assigned to the distributor. For this reason, Enedis purchases energy from pre-qualified suppliers on long-term and spot wholesale electricity markets.

These purchases are based on this information:

Enedis Synchronicity (French only) .