Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 4 May 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion
Mr. Conall Bolger:
Ultimately, internationally, solar can be deployed quickly. A site can be built in months rather than years. If the connection process were faster and cheaper here, there would be a lot of good options, but it is also a product of the financial model. It is back to the numbers again, I am afraid. While there is a good solar resource in Ireland, and it is something we have not taken advantage of to date, with a wind farm the capacity factor is significantly higher. As for the auction we have at present, because wind and solar compete, there has been a mechanism to allow solar to compete with wind in the first two auctions, which probably tells us where the relative technologies are in an Irish context, if that makes sense.
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