Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 25 June 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Long-Duration Energy Storage: Discussion

11:00 am

Mr. Paul Blount:

I can answer the first question. It is possible to do that. The choice is whether to invest in strengthening the distribution grid and build more grid or building storage. Putting more storage in allows us to sweat the grid we have up to a point but we would also reach a ceiling. Effectively it would be possible to connect more to the same grid with some short-duration storage, but that is not unlimited. It is not possible to keep building more and more storage and the problem does not go away. We can certainly get more from the grid we have with storage and it is just an economic decision. It may be a practical implementation decision and an economic decision to find the most effective way to solve the problem we are trying to solve. Technically, storage could help sweat what we have better.