Building the energy transition: electrical “network schools” make their first return

Before taking action with a sort of improved voltmeter, Maël, 17, conscientiously placed a rubber mat on the floor, put on insulating gloves and a visor over his glasses and ponytail, in his workshop in Saint-Aubin La Salle high school, near Angers, private establishment under contract.

With him, there are four high school students who were convinced to experiment with this “network schools for energy transition” system, set up in March by two subsidiary companies of EDF which manage the transport and distribution of electricity in France, RTE and Enedis, and the entire sector.

As the industry struggles to recruit, energy hiring needs are exploding. Manufacturing of equipment, cables, connection of wind turbines and photovoltaic fields to the network: the sector, which represents nearly 1.600 companies and some 100.000 employees in France, estimates that around 8.300 jobs are to be filled within it each year, including 3.300 on a work-study basis.

The high-voltage lines manager RTE has thus almost doubled its recruitment rate, in order to modernize and expand the French network and prepare the country for massive electrification, with around 700 new employees to be recruited in 2023, compared to 400 usually.

The distributor Enedis planned to hire 2.900 people in 2023, 10% more than in 2022, in particular to connect wind turbines and photovoltaic parks to the network.

If this program includes retraining and reintegration components, "the first axis is the partnership with vocational high schools to pick up young people from the end of the 3rd year and offer them a path from the second year to the professional baccalaureate, and then we will support them up to the BTS and the professional license, with a training offer adapted to our professions and our challenges,” Catherine Bobo, project director and Enedis employee, explains to AFP.

“Infatuation”

Young people in the professional baccalaureate for “electricity professions” will have “30% of specific teaching content related to electrical networks, which will allow us to increase their skills on our subjects and we will take them on internship in the project's partner companies", she specifies, adding that "each young person" will be followed by a mentor, an employee of the company where they are doing their internship.

She recalls the difficulty in "finding internship sites", echoing the reform of professional high schools launched at the start of the school year by Emmanuel Macron and of which improving professional integration constitutes an objective.

Proof that the system has won over the government, it was officially inaugurated on Friday in Dijon, by the Minister for Vocational Education Carole Grandjean, with the president of Enedis Marianne Laigneau.

Michel Chotard, director of the Angers high school, nevertheless raises a "paradox" between companies' strong need for recruitment and the "reluctance to take on interns".

“As training professionals, we see it as a real opportunity to establish professionalization and secure the training path, the young person sees it as the certainty of having a guaranteed internship over two years,” adds -he.

A number of heads of establishments, both public and private, seem in any case to have been won over: for this first return to school on a national scale, Ms Bobo was counting on ten classes in ten high schools, and some 250 young people in total in this specialty . And reality “has exceeded initial ambitions” with 40 high schools offering this training at the start of the school year. That is 120 classes and some 2.000 second, first and final year students.

A “craze” that Ms. Bobo hopes to confirm next year and even see grow, with a doubling of professional baccalaureate students in this specialty and the deployment of BTS, in order to make the most of the network of vocational high schools in the region : “we need people everywhere!”