2. The benefits of international interconnections

The first way to account for the benefits of interconnections is to recall the context in which they were developed. Historically speaking, the development of the synchronous extra-high-voltage network, which began in the 1920s, did not immediately raise the question of connections between countries. What mattered was to be able to connect generating units built according to the location of energy resources (mainly hydroelectric power stations) to consumption areas. In Europe, alternating current (AC) transmission quickly became the preferred means of crossing long distances. Then, as efficiency effects led to an increase in the size of generating units, while consumption remained relatively diffuse, the transmission network gradually expanded. The grid's interconnectedness has made it possible to address one of the problems posed by electricity, namely that it is difficult to store efficiently...