Dataset quality · RTE — Réseau de Transport d'Électricité, France

France's Energy Mix

This dataset covers the full French electricity system: national consumption, generation by source (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro…), cross-border flows, and carbon intensity at 15-minute intervals. Source: the éCO2mix open data portal published by RTE, France's transmission system operator.

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One public API — 12 years of France's grid at 15-minute resolution

RTE has published éCO2mix since 2012 via the ODRÉ platform. No authentication required. Data is available in JSON, CSV, or via the Socrata API. The historical series covers more than 260,000 fifteen-minute intervals.

The national dataset consolidates telemetry from France's 56 nuclear units, 440 hydroelectric dams, and 8,000+ wind and solar metering points. Latency is under 30 minutes in real-time mode.

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Consumption and carbon intensity — production-grade quality

Consumption, J and J-1 forecasts, and carbon intensity are the most operationally critical series. They are validated in real time by RTE teams and have null rates below 0.5% across the full history.

Net physical exchanges (ech_physiques) are measured directly at France's 7 border interconnect points with Spain, the UK, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Andorra.

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The generation backbone — solid across 12 years

Major generation sources (nuclear, hydro, gas, bioenergy) are continuously metered and validated. Null rates stay below 0.5% since 2012. The fioul column aggregates oil and coal — before 2016, granular sub-type breakdown is unavailable.

Nuclear generation — the backbone of France's mix — is the most stable series in the dataset: zero interruptions since 2012, perfectly consistent with RTE's annual energy balance reports.

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Wind and solar — improving, but sparse before 2015

Distributed solar generation (installations <36 kVA) was not metered before 2018 — it was estimated via weather modeling, introducing seasonal bias. Pre-2015 data shows null spikes in winter months.

For wind, the eolien_offshore column is only populated from mid-2021, when France's first offshore farm (Saint-Nazaire, 480 MW) connected to the grid. Before that date it is systematically null.

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Cross-border flows — reliable in aggregate, gaps in the detail

The net balance (ech_physiques) is real-time measured and reliable. Country-level commercial exchanges are reported ex-post and show ~1% missing values. Post-Brexit reconciliation with the UK adds a ~24-hour lag.

These columns are useful for market dynamic analysis but are not suitable for real-time computation. For France-only analysis, the net balance column is sufficient.

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