Mr. Bobby Smith:

My two colleagues can come in as well if they want. On the association, Energy Storage Ireland started five years ago. At that time, we had approximately 20 member companies. It was sort of an evolution of the wind sector. There were a lot of developers in Ireland who were also looking at storage for the obvious reasons we have talked about today. The two technologies are complementary. It started out as that. It was a wind developer-driven association. We had all the big developers - not only Mr. Blount's company but the likes of ESB, SSE and Energia. All of them, essentially, have been members.

Since then, we have seen a huge growth in the sector here. We have 70 member companies, as I highlighted at the start of the meeting. What is interesting to see is that we have taken on a lot more stand-alone energy storage companies. They see Ireland as a potentially very attractive market for investment. We have seen that not only in the battery storage build-out so far but now in this new evolution of long-duration storage technology. We are seeing a lot of interest, internationally and nationally, in the sector here and we have taken on a lot of members in new and exciting technologies.

As well as that, the association has grown to take on solar developers as well because that sector is really going great at the moment. It has taken off in the past few years so there is obviously a natural symmetry between storage and solar as well.

That is something we have also tapped into. In general, we represent all of the big developers, and also some smaller developers, in the wind, solar and energy storage space, as well as the systems suppliers, whether it is in battery storage or new forms of technology such as, for instance, the iron-air technology Mr. Blount discussed earlier. A great deal goes into the supply chain, whether it is banks, legal services, operation construction companies and operation maintenance providers. We also represent all of those companies which tend to be smaller in scale but are a vital cog in the whole system.

As for the subsidy gap, I am not sure if we can speak to exact figures but I will perhaps highlight that there are essentially three ways of earning revenue in the market today. There is the energy market, which is the daily wholesale electricity market. While there are some markets that are longer term and forward trading, most of the trading tends to be done close to real time. You can earn revenue between the price spreads, so essentially if you are buying low and selling high between night-time and peak demand, you can earn revenue that way. As we talked about, it is very difficult to predict and we do not know what the price will be this week or even in ten years' time. It is very difficult to build an investment based on that. It will still form part of the revenue of these long duration storage assets and they will still participate in the energy market. They will just not be enough to get the investment done.

Then there are system services, the DS3 services we talked about earlier that battery storage is providing. That has been very good for short-duration batteries and has been the foundation that has built out those batteries but it is very short term in scope. That is what it is designed to do, however. It is designed to pay to provide services at a millisecond's notice for about a half an hour or an hour in duration which can keep the power systems stable. That is where the value has been. That will continue to exist although its value is likely to go down as the market has delivered and those investments are there. Nevertheless, it will still be there is a small source of revenue.

There is also the capacity market which members may be aware of. That is basically designed to procure capacity adequacy on the system which has traditionally been fossil fuel generation. That provides some long-term certainty. You can receive a ten-year contract in the auctions, which are run every year, but they are very much geared around fossil fuel generators. For instance, the price caps at which the auctions are set are based around the cost of a new fossil fuel generator. There are things called de-rating factors, which are essentially reliability factors. These are very much geared against energy storage and weighted more towards fossil fuel storage. There are reasons behind that. We are not saying the capacity market should be redesigned for energy storage. That is not the case. We think the capacity market needs to be changed but not to the extent that it is only geared towards energy storage. It needs to deliver capacity adequacy, and that is fine, but the energy storage procurement we are talking about should exist outside of that.

That is just to give a sense of the markets. All of those markets exist and will form part of the revenue stack but they are not enough to drive investment. It is that floor that we are keen to highlight today. I do not know if we can speak to exact figures but Mr. Blount might give a sense of the gap he is facing.