Paris - France could be hit by local or national power outages if the current cold snap worsens, the head of the state-owned energy supplier EDF said in an interview published Thursday in the daily Le Parisien.

"We could have a local or national power shortage if (electricity) consumption surpasses our power-line network's delivery capacity," Pierre Gadonneix said. "For the moment, we are all right, but if it gets just a little bit colder, we will be vulnerable to a power cut."

On Wednesday, France set its third consecutive record for electricity usage, with 92,400 megawatts consumed at 7 pm (1800 GMT). In winter, a decrease of 1 degree centigrade generally provokes an increase in national power usage of 2,100 megawatts.

According to forecasts by the national weather service Meteo France, temperatures are expected to remain low through the weekend, with a gradual warming trend beginning on Monday.

The low point of the cold snap was reached on Wednesday, when temperatures fell to minus 10 degrees centigrade overnight in Paris. (dpa)