France was again a net exporter to Great Britain in 2020. Its balance for the year of 8.8 TWh was sharply lower than in 2019 (-22 %), as exchanges were more balanced between June and September, as was the case at France’s other borders as well. France notably showed an import balance in July, its first month of net imports since November 2017.

The commissioning early in 2021 of the new IFA 2 interconnector will boost exchange capacity between France and Great Britain by 1,000 MW. This project will make it possible to leverage the complementarity of the countries’ existing and future generation capacity on both sides of the Channel and North Sea.

The interconnector was once again mostly used for exports. However, for 2020 as a whole, France was a net importer for 1,740 one-hour periods, or about 20 % of the time.