Irish Grid & Renewables

Muahahaha

Switched leccy provider recently to Energia and my most recent bill tells me that 100% of the electricity I used came from renewable sources. I'm aware that wind farms in Ireland can create up to 60% of the grids needs on a windy night but typically wind averages out at around 20% to 25% of the grids overall requirements.

So how are Energia coming to this conclusion that all my electricity came from renewable sources? Are there solar farms yet in Ireland and it could be coming from here? Or are they buying renewable energy from the UK and importing it through the interconnecter? What about energy imported from nuclear sources, can this be classified as renewable?

KCross

Its a bit of marketing really.

The way they justify that statement is that they buy/support X GWh's of renewable electricity on the grid. They make sure that when they add up all the energy supplied to their customers it is < X.

They then say that 100% of your electricity is renewable.

The reality is that some of your electricity is not renewable because you can be drawing electricity when no wind is blowing but your money is being used to buy renewable energy but some of it is being consumed by other consumers, not you.

Supporting a renewable energy supplier is a way for you to encourage investment in renewables rather than going with a different supplier who will just use your money to build a gas plant.

Muahahaha

ah right that clears it up, had thought it was a bit of a strange claim but if they are purchasing X GW of renewables to cover their own customers then it makes sense.

Wondering are there any available stats on nuclear energy used in Ireland? Like when energy is imported by the interconnector from the UK to Ireland do we get a breakdown of its source?

And solar farms- do they exist in Ireland yet and are they a viable source of renewables? I know solar pv works quite well in a residential setting but havent heard of any large scale commercial solar projects on the go, it all seems to be wind. Why is this, presumably the 24 hour nature of wind vs. 8-16 hours of solar?

unkel

Muahahaha wrote: »

I'm aware that wind farms in Ireland can create up to 60% of the grids needs on a windy night

That was a few years ago. Currently it's up to 75%

I've checked about 10 times over the past 2 days and the average was nearly 70%. Obviously it has been fairly windy recently. I was at a north Dublin beach today, plenty kite surfers about and I guess a steady wind force 5 over here (used to be a wind surfer myself and I can guess the wind force pretty accurately)

Linky

Water John

No solar farms in the ROI even though a good few have planning and grid, ready to go. Waiting on a price from Govn't, who seem would rather pay the fines for not reaching our renewable targets.
A lot higher than Force 5 down here in Cork the last few days.

antoinolachtnai

There is some PV into the north and some of that will come south at times.

We also get the benefit of solar in Europe when sun is shining. The solar drives down the prices in Europe so more electricity is available from other sources in more northerly markets. We get some benefit from this because electricity from other sources is less expensive as a result.

The problem with this is that we don’t have that much demand in Ireland at the times the sun is shining intensely.

Water John

Well EVs will create a year round demand, unlike heating.

antoinolachtnai

They will. However the vehicles need to be plugged in during the mid morning and afternoon to get the value out of it. This is not the case at present and it will be a lot of work to get this in place. We still need alternative winter generating and network capacity to fuel these vehicles at times of year when the sun doesn’t shine. .

Water John

PV has a year round yield, obviously less in winter. A lot of people will be driving to work and charging there. If we had the foresight to develop the range of renewables, then they can be dovetailed along with the EV storage opton.
Anerobic Digestion (AD) has the added bonus of being variable, so that would offer the flexibility.

BTW PV yield in NI is only 90% of what is possible in South Munster. Just making the case for Cork, like.

Muahahaha

Water John wrote: »

No solar farms in the ROI even though a good few have planning and grid, ready to go. Waiting on a price from Govn't, who seem would rather pay the fines for not reaching our renewable targets.
A lot higher than Force 5 down here in Cork the last few days.

Thats interesting. Any ideas how many acres a typical solar farm might be? Also how are they being funded, entirely private or is there state subvention?

antoinolachtnai

Solar farms need a guaranteed payment Pee MWh of electricity which basically amounts to a subsidy, and which is paid out of the PSO levy. There will be an auction to allocate this and determine how high the payment will be. It’s about 5 acres per megawatt as far as I know.

Water John

Yeah 5 acres per Mw, usually 5Mw, that's 25/30 acres, these are nearly all for connection into local distribution sub stations. Some larger projects around too.

antoinolachtnai

They want to be a max of 10 MW to benefit from treatment as a ‘de minimis’ generator I imagine.

Water John

They are generally 4.95Mw, staying under 5Mw.