Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With regard to the SEAI's role with renewables, the talk is about wind. We have a great resource and we are lucky. It is to be hoped that we can develop that, particularly the powerful offshore element of it and floating wind turbines. However, wind is not a dispatchable power. We do not always have it. At the times of the greatest energy needs on this island, and there were a number of big freezes, the wind did not blow and there was no solar energy because it was dark. In one of those dark nights the temperature hit -16°C one night outside my house and it was -17°C in the midlands. What happens then? We have not cracked the nut of large-scale storage. How much effort is being put into biogas - I am aware that Bord na Móna is moving in that direction - along with biomass and hydro? I know hydro has limited capacity, but we have a lot of potential for combinations of small-scale hydro. Is there is a concern about the lack of dispatchable power when there is the greatest need?