Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy. A lot of my questions have been addressed at this point. I am curious about the role of renewable developers and operators in the development of long-duration storage. Obviously, there is an incentive there, for anyone who is in that space, to be able to send the power somewhere to put it back into the grid at a later date. Does Energy Storage Ireland have members who are developers, and is this why we are seeing a lot of the interest, or is it stand-alone energy storage providers?

I am interested as well - and it seems very clearly set out - in that there is a need for a RESS-style auction but what is the gap between the incentive that is already there for the developers and owners to operate storage and any State subsidy? I would be curious about that.

We have veered into the jurisdiction of the Demand Response Association of Ireland in some of the points that have been raised so it might be an idea for the committee to bring it back in to talk about virtual power plants, its role and the frameworks that would support demand response in the country as well. I presume Energy Storage Ireland works with the association reasonably closely. I would be interested in what kinds of engagements they have.

We are a room full of engineers at the moment so we got into the technology discussion a little bit and I am not going to stop there. I am interested in synchronous compensators. Are these part of Energy Storage Ireland's thinking as well? Perhaps they are for the more short-term system service storage more than the long term. However, it seems to me there is a role for more synchronous compensators. We have the largest one in the world down in Moneypoint. A distributed system of synchronous compensators seems to make sense for system stability.

The last question I have is about the ask of the Department, the Minister and the CRU. It has been laid out in the statement. I would be a little concerned on the timelines, and Energy Storage Ireland has noted its own concern. As a committee, we have jurisdiction over the CRU, so the witnesses might elaborate on the ask of the regulator. Mr. Smith said that EirGrid is waiting for a direction on next steps from the regulator. The committee would be keen to press the regulator for progress there. If Mr. Smith would articulate the ask of the regulator and the Department, I would appreciate that.