There are times when Germany exports energy to France, and those are hugely popularized due to the reasons you stated. However, the far more frequent cases are

There are times when Germany exports energy to France, and those are hugely popularized due to the reasons you stated. However, the far more frequent cases are: Germany has excess transient wind or solar energy, even making energy prices negative sometimes (due to fixed guaranteed producer prices and guaranteed preference). Energy storage companies in neighboring countries, mostly pumped hydro in the alps and Norway, buy the excess power and sell it back when there is demand (of course with an appropriately large margin). In general, Germany has not planned for and refuses to build any significant kind of energy storage. Existing pumped hydro plants are even shut down. Transmission lines to even out the regional differences due to weather and consumption are planned, but do not exist yet for the usual reasons and will not exist for the next decade or so. This means that Germany relies on the rest of the European grid to balance out its excess production or consumption phases, of course at a significant cost in stability and money. Cherry-picking times where the balancing-out causes energy exports to France is just propaganda imho.