Dr. Liam Ryan:

I will answer the question from Deputy Stanley about our concerns that 5% of electricity supplied should be from microgeneration by 2025. We are making the assumption that the solar rooftop will be the main contributor to that 5% and therefore, when we take into account a capacity factor, which is roughly 10% of the installed capacity, to meet the 5% average over a yearly timeframe, the majority of that will be made up during sunny days. Our calculations suggest that to make that average of 5% over that period of time we would need to have installed 2 GW of capacity. On a really sunny day, when all that capacity is being put onto the system, we have a reduced amount of consumption because there is less demand for electricity on sunny days. On those days, we would see approximately 3.5 GW.

We have, in the past, had similar challenges. As an industry and a community, what we have installed means that 65% of our energy needs can be met from renewables at the moment. This is another challenge we must overcome and storage is key to that. On a sunny day, if there is complementary solar and battery storage, people can store the excess generation from their homes and use it later to supply into the grid when required. That is a more holistic solution that we believe it would be more complementary and would make this more effective and efficient and allow for the greater penetration of renewables. We are looking for 75% instantaneous penetration for renewables in the future and an average that is much higher than the 40%, maybe even higher than 70%.