Ms Bernice Doyle:

I will come in on the question about technology. I will try to add to what Mr. Burke has said about the range of technologies. The key thing to think about in terms of storage is that it has different applications for different technologies. We spoke about the short duration of fast-acting system services. They are ideally suited to electrochemical lithium ion batteries. Lithium ion has proved to be the most economic way of delivering those services for a six- or eight-hour period. That deployment is happening in other markets such as California, Spain and elsewhere. The duration of the battery deployment is increasing. A number of technologies can do that but lithium ion has won the race. High levels of recycling are being brought into that supply chain. It is a valuable supply chain. The level of recycling will reach 90% in this decade. That will help a lot in terms of materials.

When consider multi-hour, multi-day and multi-week batteries, there are other technologies, including compressed air and pumped-storage hydroelectricity, as Mr. Burke alluded to. The problem with those types of technologies is that they are large and lumpy capital expenditure investments that need to be planned for years, possibly a decade, in advance. The reality is that the cost curves for things such as lithium ion have been decreasing rapidly over the past decade. The cost of lithium ion battery packs has decreased by 90% and that is what we are competing with. Can we make a call today to say we are going to build a capital intensive and difficult to permit solution such as pumped hydro when we can deliver modular solutions in terms of battery technology from lithium ion in the space of years as opposed to a decade? That is a hard ask for us to proceed with. We do not have the kind of topography or geography that countries such as Norway have and where that kind of hydro technology can be used for multi-week and seasonal storage. We do not have that option in Ireland. Pumped hydro would provide perhaps six hours energy in Ireland. Lithium ion batteries can almost compete with that and we can expect to see a cost decrease in the next few years. I do not think pumped hydro is a solution for Ireland.

When we consider multi-week storage, other technologies coming through can provide storage for 100-plus hours. There are metal-air technologies and flow technologies, as Mr. Burke alluded to. They are coming and will present a much decreased cost because the chemical elements involved are much more common and cheaply available. To get to multi-week coverage to address theDunkelflauteissue will require green hydrogen. When we talk about a blend of green hydrogen in the gas network and we say that the current network is capable of taking 20%, it is important to note that is 20% by volume but only 7% by energy because of the difference in energy density. That is an important point for people to be aware of.