France in recent years relied on energy imports during winters, because they heat a lot with electricity[1], and e.g. in 2015 they had to temporarily shut down

France in recent years relied on energy imports during winters, because they heat a lot with electricity[1], and e.g. in 2015 they had to temporarily shut down a lot of their nuclear plants due to "quality concerns"[2], tho that was not the first time other European nations had to save them from going dark. Germany mostly has a positive import rate (importing more than exporting) during the summer mornings and evenings, mostly because it's less windy in summers, it's dark so no solar, foreign surplus energy is readily available and cheap so that it doesn't make sense to increase hard coal energy production for a few hours each. But the coal plants are far from maxed out, and Germany does not rely on imports. E.g. during summer mornings when Germany imports about 4 GW to make up for lack of wind and solar, the hard coal plants produce 4-12 GW, meaning to avoid those imports you'd have to run them at 8-16 GW. Those plants alone can produce 19 GW easily, and that's just hard coal. If you like playing with interactive charts about energy production in Germany and the import/export rate, Fraunhofer ISE offers https://www.energy-charts.de/ https://www.energy-charts.de/ PS: Since 2006 up until now, Germany had a negative annual import rate (more exports than imports)[3]. And the last month Germany imported (not necessarily had to import) more energy than exported was September 2011. [1] https://energytransition.org/2017/01/france-cant-meet-its-own-power-demand/ https://energytransition.org/2017/01/france-cant-meet-its-ow... [2] http://www.powermag.com/frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-plants-down-due-to-quality-concerns/ http://www.powermag.com/frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-pla... [3] https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&period=annual&year=all https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&p... and make sure to enable the Import stuff in the graphs