Mr. Dave Linehan:

To come back to the question on energy storage, battery storage and the status thereof, Senator Higgins put her finger on a crucial part of the transition. This is the enabling technology to allow us to build more wind and solar on the grid over the next five to ten years. We have a sister association, Energy Storage Ireland, and I highly recommend that the committee engage with it. It came before a previous iteration of this committee and would be happy to do so again in the future. It has an annual pipeline, with a very clear picture of where the sites for battery storage are popping up throughout the country.

Long-duration energy storage is crucial. All of the existing storage we have today is in the two- to four-hour range of battery capability. We need to get to ultra long duration storage, LDS, in the coming four to five years. It is very welcome to hear EirGrid reference consultation on LDS by the end of this year. It will be important to see these projects coming online by 2030 in order that we can start to get more and more fossil gas off the system. LDS, synchronous condensers and other complex technologies will allow us to make the transition to reduce the dispatch down. Mr. Cunniffe referenced €450 million of wasted energy last year. Deputy Heneghan mentioned in his questions importing while turning off domestic power. This is all solvable with LDS, and we really welcome progress in that regard.