Load shedding: businesses that will remain open despite power cuts

Emmanuelle Wargon, president of the Energy Regulatory Commission, spoke on Wednesday December 28 on the France Inter set about the risk of upcoming power cuts, as reported by our colleagues from Liberation. The French have been good students in the face of the threat of cuts: indeed, the call for energy sobriety seems to have been heard loud and clear.

We would not risk any cuts by mid-January. Beyond this date, a potential cold spell could possibly upset the stability of the electricity network. The threat therefore still looms, but has receded somewhat, leaving everyone time to prepare as best as possible for this eventuality. Among those who have to rack their brains as to an action protocol in the case of load shedding, we find the managers of super and hypermarkets. Indeed, these businesses have not been listed as essential.

As for large and very large surfaces, their adaptability is substantial. Indeed, most of them have generators that largely allow them to last the 2 hours that the cuts will last, as reported by L’Echo Républicain. Obviously, some extreme energy savings will be made during these time slots: in particular, the lowering of the brightness, the extinction of the advertising panels or the drastic reduction of the heating.

For small local businesses, the issues are quite different: equipped with smaller and often less efficient fridges, the question of the conservation of certain foods poses a problem. Also, small town supermarkets are usually not equipped with generators. A power outage would therefore prevent them in particular from ensuring the security of the store and from getting customers through the checkout. To sum up, supermarkets should in principle not have to close during load shedding, unlike small traders.