The underside of the Linky meter in Toulouse: how the electricity network is managed in the metropolis
By Quentin Marais
Published on
Arrived in France in 2015, the Linky meter has always given rise to major debates in France. Its role is crucial in one of the Enedis control towers in Toulouse, which is none other than the network access and troubleshooting supervision and management agency (Asgard).
Toulouse, but not only
To set the scene, Enedis, an independent subsidiary of the EDF group, has 3,600 employees in the Occitania region. 600 open in Toulouse Métropole. In the fourth largest city in France, Enedis has three operational bases: in Balma, a Basso Cambo, and finally to Seven Denarius. It is in the latter that Asgard is located, which makes it possible to supervise the territory controlled by the regional management, one of the 25 in France: it includes Ariège, the Gers, and therefore the Upper Garonne.
Low voltage network
It is on the second floor of the Enedis building, located rue Marie Laurencin, that the Asgard is installed in a secure area with badged access. It is here that the low voltage network of the three departments is monitored.
Asgard fills two jobs. Network access, and troubleshooting. “When we talk about a network access, is when a person asks us to intervene on the network. This means that we validate that this work can be done according to a certain number of verified conditions, ”explains Loïc Was, director of operations for Enedis for the Midi-Pyrénées-Sud region. In short, it is above all “ensuring the safety of the people who will be working on the network”.
The second task is the repair. “It is characterized what happens when the customer calls and says he has no more power”, continues the director of operations of Enedis. “As soon as a breakdown occurs to our operations managers in charge of troubleshooting – who are two in Asgard – they will see what the problem is. nearest technician to send on the breakdown. » In Toulouse Metropolis, 11 technicians are, permanently, 24 hours a day, ready to intervene on the breakdown service.
Thanks to Linky, breakdowns can be anticipated
20 people in continuous service and 5 in discontinuous service work on the Asgard side, where two people are on call from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. And in this control tower, two software are essential for the Asgard to run at full speed and be efficient. In the first place : Cartoline. A tool that allows Enedis to anticipate breakdowns as much as possible. All thanks to a certain Linky meter…
“Cartoline allows us, with the information from Linky that will go up, to be able to predict or anticipate an incident that will happen in the future on the network, and to be able to allow troubleshooting even before the customer suffers the breakdown at home and call us. The customer won’t see anything, he’ll just see a technician come, repair a breakdown that even he hasn’t seen yet at home. Most of the time, Cartoline is just in what he tells us because if we ignore its warnings, the breakdown ends up happening.”
16 minutes of breakdown each year
Some interventions can be done under tension. ” There is a risk, tempers Loïc Was. The interest for the client is that it is not cut. But the counterpart is that in terms of security, you have to be extremely rigorous, that’s part of the requirement. “But this allows the metropolis of Toulouse an “average outage time per inhabitant over the year which is 16 minutes. It is one of the lowest in France”.
Another particularly effective tool: Windy. The director of operations of Enedis for the Midi-Pyrénées-Sud region presents it. “We are very vigilant about the weather, it can impact our network, especially the wind. This tool allows us to follow the wind, but also the storm and the snow in real time. We have weather forecasts that are sent to us upstream when there are specific events that are planned. »
… and Linky as a benchmark
But on the Asgard side, if there is a central element, it is the Linky counter. It is also presented, in all its versions, at the entrance, on the right. According to the latest figures, 96% of the Toulouse metropolitan area is covered by Linky. “The national average is 90%,” notes Loïc Was.
The deployment of Linky in Toulouse is complete
He adds: “People have understand Linky’s interest. We see this more and more with the current tensions that there may be on the energy market. Being able to control one’s consumption is a major asset for every French person, and Linky contributes to this“. And deploying it in Toulouse ‘is almost finished’.
“The Linky meter is installed at the customer’s premises, it sends its information via light carrier currents to the concentrator. This concentrator is installed in the transformer station between the medium voltage and the low voltage. It is via the telephone network that these data is then sent and received. And it is from all this data that we can anticipate breakdowns on the low voltage network.”
Linky will enable Enedis to ” receive the indexes to communicate them to the suppliers, to justify the invoicing. The other data that we can have are voltage variations. But it remains global elements ”.
And to Loïc Was to call back with a smile, in the face of strong reluctance linked to a counter sometimes suspected to be too intrusive: “it does not allow you to see if you have a hob with two or three burners, nor to see what time you turn on your TV in the evening…”
.
Was this article helpful to you? Know that you can follow Actu Toulouse in space My News . In one click, after registration, you will find all the news of your favorite cities and brands.