Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 November 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Future Licences and Contracts to Connect Data Centres to the Gas Network: Discussion

Mr. Jim Gannon:

There are other examples with regard to battery storage in particular. Because they were new and they entered an existing system in regard to connections and network charges for a period of time, one of the barriers would have been that because they both supplied and consumed electricity, they were charged a consumption network tariff and also a generation network tariff. I am not sure whether it was the year before last or last year, but we removed that double charging. We understand that more work can be done to find whether there is an even greater benefit in terms of not double charging, and while that has been reduced, it is possible that something even more sophisticated can be put in place for that. It is a matter of identifying the various barriers and making sure we not only get batteries, but that we get the right type of battery and the right service from that battery, and we then explore the other types of flexibility in terms of demand itself responding or interconnection or other storage technologies being put in place. We will likely meet all of these ultimately, given the amount of wind and solar that we have.

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