Study / Load shedding Industrial Processes
The electricity grid requires a constant, real-time balance between production and consumption to ensure good power quality and avoid the risk of blackouts. Load shedding, or demand response, involves reducing the electricity consumption of electricity consumers for a defined period in response to an external signal.
Industrial load shedding relies on the consumption of industrial sites to provide flexibility to the grid. It is part of a favourable context, driven by the ever-increasing need to balance the grid and the massive electrification of industry, which will increase the pool of available load shedding. Demand response also makes it possible to reduce the carbon intensity of electricity by limiting the need to activate peak production resources.
In 2018, France has set ambitious targets for the development of industrial load shedding: 6.5 GW of load shedding capacity by 2028, with a milestone of 4.5 GW in 2023. However by 2023, the sector is lagging these targets, and the outlook is for a slowdown in the growth of industrial load shedding and an acceleration in the other sectors.
Given the gap between the ambition and the actual development of the industrial load shedding sector, this study aims to detail the operational implementation of demand response by industrial typology, identify the main barriers to uptake and propose solution levers to achieve the reduction targets and trajectories set by the PPE and RTE.
Industrial load shedding relies on the consumption of industrial sites to provide flexibility to the grid. It is part of a favourable context, driven by the ever-increasing need to balance the grid and the massive electrification of industry, which will increase the pool of available load shedding. Demand response also makes it possible to reduce the carbon intensity of electricity by limiting the need to activate peak production resources.
In 2018, France has set ambitious targets for the development of industrial load shedding: 6.5 GW of load shedding capacity by 2028, with a milestone of 4.5 GW in 2023. However by 2023, the sector is lagging these targets, and the outlook is for a slowdown in the growth of industrial load shedding and an acceleration in the other sectors.
Given the gap between the ambition and the actual development of the industrial load shedding sector, this study aims to detail the operational implementation of demand response by industrial typology, identify the main barriers to uptake and propose solution levers to achieve the reduction targets and trajectories set by the PPE and RTE.
- To achieve these objectives, the study first recalls the industrial load reduction estimated by the ADEME in 2017 and estimates the additional source provided by the electrification of processes, based on a previous ALLICE study.
- The study then details the maturity of each industrial sector based on several comparative criteria: the current use of technical resources, the achievable technical resources and the economic constraints.
- Finally, the study relied on concrete feedback from around fifteen industrial sectors to identify the barriers to the development of load shedding and to propose levers that would allow industry to make its active contribution to balancing the electricity system and thus facilitate its decarbonization.
- One group in which load shedding has been fully implemented (e.g. metallurgy),
- Another group in which load shedding has been implemented despite economic and technical obstacles (e.g. chemicals, food processing),
- And a final group of sectors in which load shedding has been implemented only to a limited extent, or not at all (e.g. plastics processing)
