Complete change of times for 'heures creuses'

[NormanH]

If like me you have the two price system  (HP/HC) you should be aware of  a new system  that is coming in by 2025

 

 

Déplacement des Heures Creuses : détails pratiques

La réforme propose de déplacer les heures creuses vers des périodes diurnes, notamment de 11h à 17h. Ce changement vise à coïncider avec les pics de production solaire. Cette réorganisation pourrait également inclure des ajustements saisonniers pour mieux s'adapter aux variations de la production d'énergie renouvelable. 

Voici un tableau comparatif des plages horaires avant et après la réforme :

Avant Réforme	Après Réforme
22h-7h	11h-17h

Cette nouvelle répartition permet de mieux utiliser l'énergie solaire et de réduire les coûts liés au stockage nocturne.

Avantages financiers pour les consommateurs

Le déplacement des heures creuses offre plusieurs avantages financiers :

 

• Tarifs réduits en journée : Avec la réforme, les consommateurs bénéficieront de tarifs réduits durant les heures creuses diurnes, ce qui peut entraîner des économies significatives.
• Optimisation de l'autoconsommation : Les foyers équipés de panneaux solaires pourront maximiser leur autoconsommation en utilisant directement l'énergie produite durant les heures creuses diurnes
• Réduction des coûts globaux : En alignant la consommation sur la production solaire, les coûts globaux de l'électricité pourraient diminuer.

Impacts réels sur les habitudes de consommation

Pour les consommateurs, toucher au système des heures creuses nécessitera de changer leurs habitudes.

 

• Programmation des appareils : Les appareils électroménagers programmés pour fonctionner la nuit (lave-linge, sèche-linge, etc.) devront être reprogrammés pour les heures creuses diurnes. Cela peut nécessiter des modifications des habitudes et de l’organisation quotidienne.
• Équipements non adaptables : Certains équipements pourraient ne pas être facilement programmables pour fonctionner durant les nouvelles heures creuses, ce qui pourrait limiter les économies potentielles.
• Consommation en période de travail : Pour de nombreux ménages, les nouvelles heures creuses se situeront durant les heures de travail, ce qui pourrait réduire la capacité à tirer pleinement parti des tarifs réduits.
   

Préparations et adaptations nécessaires

Pour tirer pleinement parti des nouvelles heures creuses, il est essentiel de planifier et de préparer les ajustements nécessaires. Voici quelques conseils pratiques :

 

• Reprogrammez vos appareils électroménagers pour fonctionner durant les nouvelles heures creuses.
• Utilisez des programmateurs pour automatiser l'utilisation des appareils énergivores.
• Informez-vous régulièrement sur les plages horaires exactes des heures creuses afin de maximiser vos économies.

Tableau de Programmation des Appareils

Appareil	Ancienne Période	Nouvelle Période
Lave-linge	Nuit (22h-7h)	Journée (11h-17h)
Sèche-linge	Nuit (22h-7h)	Journée (11h-17h)
Chauffe-eau	Nuit (22h-7h)	Journée (11h-17h)
Climatisation	Nuit (22h-7h)	Journée (11h-17h)

Edited July 28 by NormanH

[DaveLister]

Has this been confirmed Norman?

If so can you provide a link?

[NormanH]

I copied the information from my supplier: https://www.totalenergies.fr/particuliers/parlons-energie/actualites/societe/reforme-heures-creuses    but there are other sources https://www.expertise-energie.fr/changement-des-heures-creuses-ce-qui-vous-attend/

https://www.lesfurets.com/energie/actualites/electricite-vers-une-nouvelle-repartition-des-heures-creuses-en-journee

https://econostrum.info/electricite-heures-creuses-nuit-journee/

But I haven't seen a fixed date yet, just 2025

 

 

 

[Lehaut]

I think it was on this forum that I saw the suggestion that just a normal tariff was the most economical for an all electric dwelling.   I cancelled the heurses-creuses contract when we moved into this all electric flat and went on a normal one.  The biggest draw for us in the winter in heating, which we generally use during the day.

[Lori]

44 minutes ago, Lehaut said:

I think it was on this forum that I saw the suggestion that just a normal tariff was the most economical for an all electric dwelling.   I cancelled the heurses-creuses contract when we moved into this all electric flat and went on a normal one.  The biggest draw for us in the winter in heating, which we generally use during the day.

Same exact thing for us.

And, heurses creuses are different from one region to another.  I found it useful when we had 14h00 to 16h00 heurses creuses in the Vaucluse, but the hours in the Dordogne are in the wee hours of the morning.  I could set one load of laundry, but I'd have to get up at 3h00 if I wanted to wash a second load.  Running the dishwasher in wee hours was fine, but really everything else was just a hassle.  We don't see any difference in our electricity bill since going to the full tarif.  It's high no matter what.

 

Edited July 29 by Lori

[NormanH]

The new  times would suit you both better then.

[Lori]

36 minutes ago, NormanH said:

The new  times would suit you both better then.

Perhaps if this was a national change.  However, so far, we have not had any real difference in our factures since dropping the heures creuses plan.  And, it is nice not to have to think about what hour I do things.  The only way this might be beneficial (IMO) is that it lasts longer than the old creuses hours, making it possible to perhaps save a few euros.

[betise]

I think it is also due to electric cars charging at night on HC, so the "less popular" hours are being increasingly used.  Plus, as Norman mentioned, electricity from solar panels  Our HC are during the night, I believe this is true for all new contracts, at least with EDF.  Before, we had lunchtime HC too, but when we moved, in the same village, only night time HC was available.  EDF have a calculator to enable you to see if you have the best tariff.  For us, the current HC hours works well, as both the dishwasher and washing machine are programmed to run at night.

[menthe]

1 hour ago, Lori said:

Same exact thing for us.

And, heurses creuses are different from one region to another.  I found it useful when we had 14h00 to 16h00 heurses creuses in the Vaucluse, but the hours in the Dordogne are in the wee hours of the morning.  I could set one load of laundry, but I'd have to get up at 3h00 if I wanted to wash a second load.  Running the dishwasher in wee hours was fine, but really everything else was just a hassle.  We don't see any difference in our electricity bill since going to the full tarif.  It's high no matter what.

 

Like you, Lori, we gave it up.  I began to feel guilty if I didn't hoover, cook, iron, etc during the HCs

[Noisette]

Well it's certainly knocked on the head our project to install solar panels. We'd carefully worked out that the 6 hours overnight HC took care of a chunk of electricity consumed by the PAC heating in winter while the 2 hours at midday were useful for cooking. The auto-consommation from the PV panels would have taken care of what are currently our two biggest consumers in summer..the pool and watering pumps. I find it utterly disgraceful that EDF and the government in cahoots can manipulate users in this way, and also slyly reduce the number of HC to six.

PV panels really only benefit a household during the day and for part of the year, whereas these changes will impact customers all year round.

I wonder how much of the decision has to do with the fact that the government are losing out on the taxes slapped onto bills, as well as TVA. What a bloody country this is becoming!

[Martin963]

I think the devil may be in the words <<Cette réorganisation pourrait également inclure des ajustements saisonniers pour mieux s'adapter aux variations de la production d'énergie renouvelable.  >>

 

It's all very well suddenly trying to dump a load of solar excess during summer daytime by selling it off cheap,   but that ain't going to apply in the three darkest winter months.    My guess is that we're gradually going to see Heures Creuses becoming an entirely movable feast (*);   the aim (maybe unstated at the moment) for grid operators is to get customers to be entirely flexible,   and for that we're going to have to go a lot further down the smart meter/variable pricing road.   I think this announcement (which had been trailed on TF1 in a reportage several weeks ago in fact) is just the start of an increasingly complex variable time-of-day pricing regime.

For those with automatic switching systems (eg immersion heaters) it's fine,   the grid signalling system can flip flop the "on" times automatically,   but it's going to become complicated for average consumers when it comes to washing machines and dishwashers etc,   that is until they are smart too.    I believe many EV charging systems are becoming smart which might help to average out grid loading....

Having solar panels here in Devon is - at least for us - rather fun,  in that on a winter's day with sunshine we catch up on washing (if there isn't any for days on end we do it on cheap overnight power I hasten to add).    Again,   it's easy for us because we're here most of the time at home,  so we can adapt our consumption to levels of sunshine and price on the gird.  In addition we have two Tesla house batteries,   which can be charged up at night (in the winter months when there is little sunshine) on cheap rate power (8.5 p per kWh) and which then have sufficient reserves (2 x 13.5 kWh) to power us through the next day,   even in mid winter.    Before I'm accused of virtue signalling,  we did it to save money,  not to be green,    although whether or not it'll ever really be successful in overall payback terms depends on many factors,   including future price increases.    Certainly at the moment it's reduced our power bill from about £2000 a year to about £600.

 

As I say,   easy and quite amusing for us.    But variable time of day pricing for those who are out at work and with limited flexibility about culinary arrangements are going to be severely impacted if this sort of thing gets entirely out of hand;    cooking an evening meal at a price of say 60 p a kWh is going to be terrible.   With a complete bogwit like Milliband in charge of our energy policy now I honestly foresee powercuts very soon,   I doubt he would be able to define a kWh or be able to even guess at average consumptions for households etc.   He really is a dangerous fool in his new role....

 

(*)   The red/white/blue Tempo tariff was an early attempt at variable pricing.   Is that still going?

 

Edited July 29 by Martin963

[alittlebitfrench]

2 hours ago, Noisette said:

Well it's certainly knocked on the head our project to install solar panels. We'd carefully worked out that the 6 hours overnight HC took care of a chunk of electricity consumed by the PAC heating in winter while the 2 hours at midday were useful for cooking. The auto-consommation from the PV panels would have taken care of what are currently our two biggest consumers in summer..the pool and watering pumps. I find it utterly disgraceful that EDF and the government in cahoots can manipulate users in this way, and also slyly reduce the number of HC to six.

PV panels really only benefit a household during the day and for part of the year, whereas these changes will impact customers all year round.

I wonder how much of the decision has to do with the fact that the government are losing out on the taxes slapped onto bills, as well as TVA. What a bloody country this is becoming!

We are making adjustments in our lives to not get so dependent on EDF. They are bandits. Thieves….nothing more nothing less.

But you are right. The cost of tax on our electricity and gas consumption was higher than our consumption itself. There or there about. French Government vs EDF on stealing your money ?

Its madness. The French government tax you into freezing to death….whilst Mr Macron spends 30 K euros per month (im guessing….but it is something like that I read once) on flowers to decorate the elysee.

It will get worse. Until France has a functional education system…..it will get worse.

I would go solar if you can.

[Lori]

47 minutes ago, alittlebitfrench said:

whilst Mr Macron spends 30 K euros per month

I thought that was his hairdresser budget or was it his make-up budget ..

I read about their vanity budget once.  It was eye popping, even for me, the jaded one.

[Harnser]

4 hours ago, Noisette said:

Well it's certainly knocked on the head our project to install solar panels. We'd carefully worked out that the 6 hours overnight HC took care of a chunk of electricity consumed by the PAC heating in winter while the 2 hours at midday were useful for cooking. The auto-consommation from the PV panels would have taken care of what are currently our two biggest consumers in summer..the pool and watering pumps. I find it utterly disgraceful that EDF and the government in cahoots can manipulate users in this way, and also slyly reduce the number of HC to six.

PV panels really only benefit a household during the day and for part of the year, whereas these changes will impact customers all year round.

I wonder how much of the decision has to do with the fact that the government are losing out on the taxes slapped onto bills, as well as TVA. What a bloody country this is becoming!

The problem that EDF are confronted with is that too much solar generation is connected to the power grid, compounded by fluctuating wind generation.

This destabilises the way that the French nuclear power grid is supposed to be run, ie steady state base load generation, nukes don't like being throttled up and down to cope with the unreliable output of renewables, it leads to increased maintenance and cost.

As France has 100 per cent nuclear backup for solar and wind, we don't need  wind and solar generation at all.  Wind and solar are, in fact, completely pointless.

[DaveLister]

Wasn't it last year the France had to shut down a number of nuclear reactors because there wasn't enough water?

[Harnser]

26 minutes ago, DaveLister said:

Wasn't it last year the France had to shut down a number of nuclear reactors because there wasn't enough water?

Yes, what a disaster that would have been if that had coincided with a period of light or no wind or cloudy weather.!

Edited July 29 by Harnser

[Noisette]

1 hour ago, Harnser said:

The problem that EDF are confronted with is that too much solar generation is connected to the power grid, compounded by fluctuating wind generation.

  Wind and solar are, in fact, completely pointless.

So they didn't foresee that a combination of grants and the necessity for households to reduce soaring bills would produce the, supposedly, desired effect of prompting 100,000s of people to invest in PV?  Of the three major companies providing a virtual battery storage service, one is in (real) meltdown and the other two are struggling to cope with demand. Not that they were a solution to the problem as they are just a middleman and the 'excess' input ended up in the grid anyway.

It's a novel idea, but why aren't EDF actively investing in some form of storage rather than just manipulating home production?  Solar at least is anything but pointless as the volume of injection proves, but wouldn't it be wonderful if, just for once, they applied themselves to genuine, forward-thinking management of the resource, rather than making obscene amounts of money on behalf of shareholders and government.

 

[alittlebitfrench]

2 hours ago, Harnser said:

.  Wind and solar are, in fact, completely pointless.

So is the end of humanity.

If I lived in a windy area a would invest in a wind turbine. I would also invest in solar panels.

If I move house again, I am going grid edf shareholder free.

[Harnser]

Hottest temperatures were a long time ago, if you look at the raw data instead of propaganda.

[Noisette]

4 hours ago, alittlebitfrench said:

So is the end of humanity.

If I lived in a windy area a would invest in a wind turbine. I would also invest in solar panels.

If I move house again, I am going grid edf shareholder free.

It's a nice idea, ALBF, but much more difficult than you'd think.  For a start, you simply have to rely on the grid for those times when PV isn't producing *. You also have to have a sort of 'safety valve' for your surplus production when it is! That's where Enedis and EDF come in, as most installations are connected up to an existing Linky which manages the incoming and outgoing automatically. Unless you are an extremely well-qualified electrician, or know one who can set up your system independently, it's a non-starter .

*The idea behind the virtual battery schemes was that you stock your surplus, via a third party, on the grid and draw on it when it's needed, but it's proving to be more complex than first thought. Too many imponderables...

[DaveLister]

6 hours ago, Noisette said:

most installations are connected up to an existing Linky

You obviously have done a lot of research in this area Noisette. My Linky is not accessible. Does that mean I can't install any renewables?

[alittlebitfrench]

8 hours ago, Harnser said:

Hottest temperatures were a long time ago, if you look at the raw data instead of propaganda.

What happened in the past is irrelevant. What is happening today is important. Ok it might cool down in the future but we don’t know that. It would be silly not to react. I would rather the scientists are proved wrong than the Earth turning into Mars. So would they I guess.

Is not just air temperature though it is the sea temperature that is the scary one. Melting ice rising sea levels = more extreme weather. Not sure what the trend is for sea temperatures but I bet they are hotter today than in 1825.
 

It was 40 degrees here yesterday and 50 degrees in the cour. The stress that heat is putting on the house and the cars is scary. Today it will be the same temperature followed by storms and hail. Years ago we had our car destroyed by hail.

So yeah, extreme weather events is the killer. Flooding, forrest fires, storms, mountains falling apart, buildings falling apart.
 

No can argue that there is more extreme weather events. Most 

[alittlebitfrench]

5 minutes ago, DaveLister said:

You obviously have done a lot of research in this area Noisette. My Linky is not accessible. Does that mean I can't install any renewables?

I think the Linky only comes into it if you want to send your excess electricity back to the grid. But you don’t have to. Your solar panels are connected directly to your electrics board. It is just one wire. You lose your excess by installing batteries which store any excess electricity and you use it later. If you don’t want batteries (they are expensive) you have an appliance that kicks in to use that electricity like…. air conditioning. 

[alittlebitfrench]

7 hours ago, Noisette said:

It's a nice idea, ALBF, but much more difficult than you'd think.  For a start, you simply have to rely on the grid for those times when PV isn't producing *. You also have to have a sort of 'safety valve' for your surplus production when it is! That's where Enedis and EDF come in, as most installations are connected up to an existing Linky which manages the incoming and outgoing automatically. Unless you are an extremely well-qualified electrician, or know one who can set up your system independently, it's a non-starter .

*The idea behind the virtual battery schemes was that you stock your surplus, via a third party, on the grid and draw on it when it's needed, but it's proving to be more complex than first thought. Too many imponderables...

Going off grid is more of a project and a hobby. It would be interesting and fun. But has to be done from scratch.

It not just solar panels and a wind turbine it’s everything. You have to look at how you consume and change accordingly.

We are quite good on the electricity side. We don’t have a big fridge. We do the washing at 30 degrees on 30 min cycle.. We have a little work surface grill oven that takes about 5 mins to heat up. 

The problem is the cost of the abandonment for the electricity and the tax. That is what is expensive.

In terms of solar panels, I would go for a ground installation. I would never put them on a roof. Far to expensive. And yes, I would invest in batteries.

We can’t go off grid here but 7 months electricity would be free…..ish. Good quality solar panels will still work in the winter on a cloudy day.

 

[Lehaut]

15 hours ago, DaveLister said:

shut down a number of nuclear reactors because there wasn't enough water?

I believe it is more to do with the temperature differential between the intake and out take water temperatures .  Climate change is altering water availability and base temperature in lots of places.  Went on a tour of the local power station near Nantes on the Loire, they mentioned this problem.  The output temperature is controlled to avoid overheating river water and its effect on fish stocks etc.

https://callendar.climint.com/en/weather-impact-french-nuclear-production/