The Languedoc Page - articles by Derek Andrews

In order to start this new column, I would like first to introduce myself… I am Derek Andrews, a happily married ex-pat Brit living and running a small company based in Saint Malo, not far from the port where some of you started out your French adventure or some who pass through to Portsmouth and beyond.

I came, I saw and I fell in love with France many years ago whilst still a schoolboy from Bristol and then met my now wife, Marie-Christine, in that long hot summer in 1976.

I made up for lost time this summer, almost 30 years to the day that we first met, by taking her to see the Mayor and making an honest woman of her… this also gave great impetus to my total integration into the closed society circles here in France.

My specialisation is, and always has been, the economy of energy, the production of electricity in all its forms and the safe usage of this energy.

This is why I am starting this column to help people like yourselves gain a bit, or even total independence in terma of the ‘dark side of the force’ the E D F

EDF… what can one say about a giant ‘Public Service’, a monopoly, illegal in the eyes of Brussels, but fully protected by the French Establishment, that has it’s plus sides and lots of negative ones too! It’s a dinosaur, believes totally in nuclear, but believes in making life extremely difficult to all those who do not live in big towns and cities.

We all know that in Blighty, most overhead cables have been replaced by underground cables… not here! It gives jobs to the ‘boys’ and slows down the response after a big storm meaning that if you live in the Cevennes, one storm, often means no power for weeks!

This is where I come in, and my presence on the market gives much displeasure to our friends in the EDF

In later episodes, I will be sharing some of my delight, in showing how to make EDF pay YOU…

If you buy a house with electricity installed, it is ILLEGAL to disconnect yourself from EDF

If you buy a house without… the installation charges can and do run into thousands to have EDF installed

If you are at the end of the line… and your power goes all wobbly… 230V goes to zero when the farmer switches on the milking equipment it’s normal, and what’s more, even without power…. You still HAVE to pay for your ‘abonnement’ even if there’s no juice in the building!

If your house is fitted with three phase, you will probably NEVER be able to have it changed to single phase, but a single phase supply, can be upgraded to three phase, for geothermal heating etc, but it costs a bomb and only EDF can do it!

SO, you have your house fitted with an electricity supply, now you’re going to have to find ways of saving energy, or, making energy, or, safeguarding your equipment from supply interruptions like the famous Saturday night, the 4 th of November, when three quarters of France lost power, because Germany had a grid fault and with the famous European Grid System now in place, if there’s going to be a ‘cock-up’, everyone’s going to have a power outage!

Officially, like in the UK, the power has to be guaranteed in terms of quality; ie. 230V pure sinewave with an operational tolerance of -9% and +6%, or your 230V can be anywhere between 209V and 244V

However, this is generalised, and we all know that in the middle of the countryside, your precious 230V does not stay in the generalised range. This causes things to go wrong, computers to crash, kettles to overheat, fuses to blow and breakers to trip and all for no apparent reason.

The problem we have is that the power taken by an object is the sum of both the voltage and current drawn… aha! Back to school here! That subject that many hated…. Maths!

If you take an electric fire, a standard 3000W variety, at 230V you will draw 13A from the mains, but… and a big but, your supply drops to 200V in the evening time, you’ll be pulling 15A, drop to 170V, as does at my friend’s house in the Cevennes (with amazing regularity) you’ll pull nearly 18A and the protecting 16A breaker will trip all day long. (I have monitored his supply as being anywhere between 0V during a power cut through to 379V during a power surge which destroyed his computer and smoked practically every electrical appliance that was left plugged in…. BEWARE, be very AWARE.

You may also notice that as the voltage dips, the electric counter speeds up…. This is a cunning plan, one of Baldrick’s best, as the french meters will work with 110V through to 280V and you pay for what you use in CURRENT! Not power! Your meter also may measure in KVA, but your bills arrive in KWH, big difference between the two…. Can be as much as 20% additional cost… this is not illegal, just another wonderful example of the workings of the dinosaur at work!

Derek Andrews, is a happily married ex-pat Brit living and running a small company based in Saint Malo specialising in the economy of energy, the production of electricity in all its forms and the safe usage of this energy. His website is here.

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One of a series of articles about electricity and alternative energy by Derek Andrews