The Paris Olympics have undertaken a groundbreaking initiative by committing to fully power the event using the electrical grid, avoiding the reliance on traditional diesel generators.
Although generators are dependable, they are also polluting and heavily dependent on diesel fuel.
This cultural shift represents a significant challenge for the upcoming Olympics in California, where the electrical grid is more vulnerable and subject to the strains of extreme weather conditions.
Historically, major sporting and cultural events, such as tournaments, matches, concerts, and festivals, have relied heavily on generators to meet their substantial electricity needs without the fear of power outages.
These generators ensure uninterrupted media transmission, screen displays, and lighting, among other demands.
For the 2024 Paris Olympics, the organizers have broken with this tradition, opting to connect everything to the grid and reserving diesel generators solely for emergency situations. This is the first time such a strategy has been employed on this scale.
A Commitment to Low-Carbon Energy
This commitment allows the Paris Olympics to utilize low-carbon electricity and aligns with their goal of halving the greenhouse gas emissions compared to the London and Rio Games.
“These are enormous challenges that are not necessarily visible, as almost everything is buried underground,” notes Marianne Laigneau, Chairwoman of the Management Board of Enedis, the primary electricity distributor in France and the key player in connecting the Olympics to the grid.
Enedis has invested 100 million euros and undertaken 8,000 projects to connect or secure the grid, ensuring that generators are unnecessary across the 42 Olympic sites and over 200 celebration venues, including the International Broadcast Center, a critical site that broadcasts the events worldwide.
Additionally, Enedis has installed “event terminals” at temporary sites—retractable power boxes embedded in the ground that can be reused for future street events.
During the 2012 London Olympics, 4.3 million liters of diesel were consumed, according to Enedis. Now, facilities like Stade de France, Arena Bercy, the Saint-Etienne stadium, and Parc des Princes can function entirely on the grid in a sustainable manner.
“Generators are returning to their intended role: as backup power sources,” Laigneau explained during an interview with AFP.
Shifting Away from Diesel Dependence
“Gradually, we are convincing others of the importance of changing this mindset,” emphasizes Laigneau, who has also partially connected events like the We Love Green and Rock en Seine music festivals and the Courchevel World Ski Championships to the grid.
While stadiums are generally powered by the grid for day-to-day operations, they still rely on generators during evening matches or concerts. “The event sector has organized itself this way out of habit, having operated in countries where the grid is less reliable,” Enedis points out.
Will Los Angeles Follow Paris’s Lead?
As Los Angeles prepares for the 2028 Olympics, will it follow Paris’s example and limit generators to emergency use? The organizers plan to reveal more details about their energy and sustainability strategies early next year.
Discussions have already begun. In April, meetings took place with the “network operators involved in the Los Angeles Olympics,” according to Enedis. Representatives from these operators were also in Paris recently to observe the electrical setups.
To convince the International Olympic Committee of the grid’s reliability, it was necessary to create redundancy by doubling the power delivery points upstream of the sites.
This ensures that if the primary power source fails, a secondary one automatically takes over, explains Sébastien Pietre-Cambacedes, Director of Enedis Ile-de-France Ouest.
So far, the results have been “positive,” Enedis reports, citing only one incident at a Games site: a power outage on Monday at the Vélodrome Stadium in Marseille.
“The generators took over, as planned,” due to a technical issue caused by extreme heat affecting a transformer, impacting 22,000 nearby residents for “a few minutes.”
California’s Electrical Grid Under Scrutiny
The reliability of the electrical grid will undoubtedly be a focal point in California, where the network has demonstrated its vulnerabilities during episodes of extreme heat, which strain the grid by driving up air conditioning usage and electricity consumption.
In August 2020, a severe heatwave forced the state to cut power to 800,000 homes and businesses for several hours over two days—a situation not seen in nearly 20 years.
In September 2022, another heatwave led authorities to request reductions in electricity consumption. However, widespread outages were avoided thanks in part to massive batteries that reinjected electricity generated from solar and wind energy back into the grid.