Société nationale d'électricité et de thermique (SNET) is a french

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 electricity

Electricity

Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...

 generation and sales company.

Heir of Charbonnages de France

Charbonnages de France

Charbonnages de France is a French enterprise created in 1946, as a result of the nationalization of the private mining companies....

's thermal power station

Thermal power station

A thermal power station is a power plant in which the prime mover is steam driven. Water is heated, turns into steam and spins a steam turbine which drives an electrical generator. After it passes through the turbine, the steam is condensed in a condenser and recycled to where it was heated; this...

s, SNET have an installed potency of 2,4 GW (around 2 % of EDF

Électricité de France

Électricité de France S.A. is the second largest French utility company. Headquartered in Paris, France, with €65.2 billion in revenues in 2010, EDF operates a diverse portfolio of 120,000+ megawatts of generation capacity in Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.EDF is one of...

's). SNET positioned as concurrent of EDF

EDF

- Military :* Elmendorf Air Force Base, a United States Air Force Base in Alaska* Estonian Defence Forces, military of the Republic of Estonia* European Defence Force, an international military force by the European Council- Organizations :...

 since the opening of the French electricity market to eligible clients in 1999.

In September 2004, the company was acquired by the Spanish company Endesa

Endesa (Spain)

Endesa, S.A. is the largest electric utility company in Spain. The firm, a majority-owned subsidiary of the Italian utility company Enel, has 10 million customers in Spain, with domestic annual generation of over 97,600 GWh from nuclear, fossil-fueled, hydroelectric, and renewable resource power...

. According to L'Humanité

L'Humanité

L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...

, this was followed by the downsizing of 30% of the employees

In June 2008 , SNET was sold to the German group E.ON

E.ON

E.ON AG, marketed with an interpunct as E•ON, is the holding company of the world's largest investor-owned energy service provider based in Düsseldorf, Germany. The name comes from the Greek word aeon which means eternity....

. SNET currently evolves building several combined cycle

Combined cycle

In electric power generation a combined cycle is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem off the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy, which in turn usually drives electrical generators...

 gas turbines, the two first French ones on the thermal plant Emile Huchet in Saint-Avold

Saint-Avold

Saint-Avold is a commune in the Moselle department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.It is situated twenty-eight miles east of Metz and seventeen miles southwest of Saarbrücken....

(east of France).