The move marks a significant structural change in the integration of renewable energy into grid operations, reinforcing the country’s alignment with EU electricity market design principles.
The balancing mechanism, operated by grid operator Réseau de Transport d’Électricité (RTE), enables real-time corrections to system imbalances by activating upward or downward offers from market participants, through Manual Frequency Restoration Reserve (mFRR). Historically, the mechanism relied on dispatchable thermal and hydro assets connected to the transmission grid, with limited participation from renewable energy producers, especially if they operate on the distribution level.
Under the new obligation, the ‘Code de l’énergie’ requires all generation assets above 10 MW connected to public networks to submit their full, technically feasible, upward and downward flexibility to RTE via balancing offers. The law allows for the differentiation of thresholds by technology, but explicitly sets 10 MW as the minimum limit. Installations below this threshold remain exempt to avoid overburdening smaller projects.
The reform responds to the growing challenges linked to intermittent renewable generation. In recent years, RTE has increasingly faced excess supply occurrences driven by high renewable energy output, with insufficient downward balancing offers available – prompting ad hoc non-market interventions (i.e. partial or complete curtailment). Integrating large renewable generators into the balancing mechanism is intended to improve system security and reduce reliance on out-of-market measures.
Under the current pay-as-bid design of the balancing mechanism, renewable generators whose output is curtailed upon activation by RTE will receive compensation at the price of their submitted downward offer. Similarly, upward activations (from flexible assets) are remunerated at the offer price.
Implementation may require technical adaptations. Renewable energy producers subject to the new obligation will need infrastructure for real-time data transmission, forecasting, and activation with RTE or through a BSP. Many producers are expected to contract with aggregators for compliance. Concurrently, RTE and Enedis are establishing interfaces for upward data flows from distribution-level renewable energy installations to support system-wide control.
This obligation forms part of France’s transposition of EU Clean Energy Package provisions requiring non-discriminatory access to balancing markets. It also aligns with broader changes such as the adoption of 15-minute market intervals and the integration into European balancing platforms (e.g. MARI, PICASSO) from end-2025. Regulatory supervision is assigned to the “Commission de regulation de l’Energie”(CRE ), which will oversee enforcement and may propose sanctions in cases of non-compliance.
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