Mr. Robin McCormick:

I will take on the many questions from Deputy Stanley, who alluded to the challenge of operating a system with renewable energy. We have described the progress we have made operating on a system with a lot of onshore wind, which is intermittent. We try to forecast it as best we can and then we try to run the system on the back of that. There will be days when there is little wind and there will be some days when there are record amounts of wind. Last Friday, there was a new record in respect of wind on the system. That has been a significant technical challenge for us and the benefit of that is that the more wind we can accommodate on the system the better the prices of electricity and the more we benefit from the decarbonisation of electricity generation.

We have made great strides on our journey to integrate intermittent supply and the 40% target set for 2020 is achievable. For us the challenge is to move the instantaneous level of renewals from the 65% which is the present level to 75% in 2020. The benefit of that is that if we achieve that 75% target there is less curtailment of all the wind that is connected so there are times when we have to ask those wind generators to generate less because the system would not remain stable if we did not do that. That is the journey we are on. Deputy Stanley is correct to recognise that there is a great deal of change ahead. One of the ways we have tried to assess it is to introduce our tomorrow's energy scenarios. These involve engaging with society at large and with our stakeholders in order to try to understand how people see the future. Will it be much of what we have had or will there be a significant level of customer action?

The Deputy raised many different changes that could impact on how we manage the grid, including that relating to micro-generation. Micro-generation would impact on it effectively from our perspective because there would not be as much demand. There could be more solar energy and electric vehicles. We have tried to set out four different scenarios that start to explain what the impact on our business and on the grid would be and we expect to engage in an ongoing discussion. It is expected that policymakers will have an opportunity to understand what the future may look like and it gives us an opportunity to consider matters and ask what will be the impact on the grid of all the different scenarios. We are doing this at present and we are developing plans for those scenarios so that we understand the impact on infrastructure.