Storm Austen Knocks Out Power to Nearly 300,000 French Homes

Storm Austen knocked out electricity to almost 300,000 customers in western France on Friday as hurricane-force winds battered the region, disrupting roads, railways and other transport links.

Brittany was hardest hit, with almost 150,000 customers without power, according to distributor Enedis. Amber weather alerts are in place across northwest Spain and France, and the western half of Germany. One region in northern Germany near the Harz Mountains is under a red alert for high winds.

Airports on Jersey and Guernsey were closed. Cancellations and delays are mounting at Paris airports, according to data from Flight tracking site Flightradar24.

Austen is the first named storm this autumn and it’s also sending power prices in France and Germany tumbling. A surge in wind generation is flooding grids with cheap electricity, offering some relief to markets that have been grappling with the highest natural gas prices since the 2022 energy crisis.

In Germany, Europe’s biggest power market, wind generation is poised to set a new output record on Friday and could come close to meeting all the nation’s needs on Sunday, although curtailment and must-run generation may limit actual output. Kpler SA forecasts that power prices will drop to €29 a megawatt-hour on Saturday and near zero on Sunday, the lowest since April.

French prices are also forecast to plunge, falling to about €17 on Sunday, the lowest since June. The burst of wind generation reduces the need for more expensive gas-fired plants, which often set prices when renewable output is low.

Austen swept through the English Channel on Friday, lashing both coasts of France and England with heavy rain. Gusts as high as 140 kilometers per hour (87 miles) are expected in some French coastal areas, equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, according to Météo-France.

Enedis has mobilized more than 2,000 personnel since Wednesday, with several hundred additional technicians being sent to the hardest-hit areas as part of its rapid response force. In Normandy, cuts affected 88,800 customers, 49,600 in Pays de la Loire and almost 8,000 in Hauts-de-France, Enedis said.

The storm also disrupted transport across northern and western France. Several roads and train lines around Paris and in Normandy, Brittany and Hauts-de-France were interrupted, Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said on X.

In the U.K., airports on the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were closed until Friday afternoon. About 20,000 people lost power in southwest England, according to National Grid.

The U.K. day-ahead power price for Saturday settled at £37 per megawatt-hour, less than half of the average so far this year according to data from Epex Spot.

A second storm, named Boelo, is set to follow this weekend, taking a more northerly route across Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England, according to the U.K. Met Office. Boelo could bring winds of as much as 129 kilometers an hour to coastal areas along with heavy rain. The U.K. has issued amber weather warnings for that storm starting Saturday.

The storm patterns could push wind speeds in Europe’s key power markets to 31% above the 10-year average through Nov. 4, helping to offset increased heating demand and weaker solar generation, BloombergNEF said in a note.

Top photo: Waves crash against a jetty in the port of Le Conquet, western France, Oct. 22. Photographer: Fred Tanneau/AFP/Getty Images. Bloomberg.