Mr. Dara Ó Maoldhia:

First, on microgrids, there are two options that we could follow. The ESB has a project on microgrids and we asked it if it would consider us one of the pilots of that. That type of microgrid would be owned and administered by the ESB, but it would try to keep the production and use of electricity local to the three Aran Islands. That is one option for it. The other is a community-owned microgrid. We are working on a pilot study of that through an SEAI-funded programmed called Secure. We have partners involved in that project here in Ireland. The idea there would be that households that are already producing electricity, like in my house, I have 2 kW of PV in my garden, I have an electric car that has battery storage and I have heat pumps, therefore I could be one of those prosumers who would join this community-owned microgrid and any surplus electricity that I am generating that I cannot use I would sell into our local microgrid. That microgrid would then make it available to other consumers on the island who are part of the programme. This pilot project will probably involve around 20 houses. We have not quite got to that stage yet. We are already prosumers. One of the real challenges is to develop the software involved to monitor the generation and usage of energy in every house that is involved in the project and to feed it to where it is needed in a particular house and so on. There is quite an amount of software development needed to be done for it. That is the role of one of the companies that we are involved with in this study.

On mid-size rooftop solar PV, the challenge is that any rooftop solar PV would have to be used in the building because we do not have any export capacity if we go ahead with this wind turbine. We will be using all our export capacity simply for the wind turbine. Among our frustrations are first, that the wind turbine is not as big as we want it to be and we are being limited; and second, if we do erect the turbine and export that energy, we have blocked all the other possibilities for generating. We have ambitions to generate much more electricity via solar PV. However, where will it go if we cannot use it ourselves? We are either going to have to store it in batteries or convert it to hydrogen. It is quite frustrating for us.

In a way, that sort of paints the general picture of our problem, at least on the Aran Islands and probably on the other islands as well. We are pushing ahead faster than the Government is catching up. We are out there trying to get things done that the Government says it wants done, but it has not put the infrastructure in place for us to do it, in terms of exporting energy, hydrogen or quite a number of other things as well. In the islands in general, and certainly I can speak for the Aran Islands, the population there is so supportive of this energy transition. We virtually have no opposition. We experienced opposition to where we originally proposed to put a turbine, but once we find the right place to put the turbine, we will not have that opposition.

The same applies to all of the other things we are trying to do in the islands. We get huge support. We had a meeting the other day in the afternoon on a weekday on Inis Mór to do with PV panels and people wanting to get them on their roofs and 20 people turned up to it. That is a huge turnout in a small community on a weekday afternoon. There is huge support for this transition on the islands, which there may not be to the same extent on the mainland. Also, the islanders are very educated about it, because we have been involved in this now for the past ten years. They know what they want, they are supportive of it and they have bought into our overall project, which ultimately is to preserve the language, heritage and culture of the islands. It is to preserve that richness out there and to keep people on the island and give them quality jobs.