Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Last month, I launched a new Strategy for Renewable Energy 2012–20. Under this strategy the development of wind farms in Ireland will play a critical role in delivering on our renewable energy ambitions, both in terms of meeting our own national 2020 targets and in contributing to the development of a renewable electricity export market with the UK in the first instance.

There has been considerable growth in the deployment of wind farms in Ireland from around 300 MW of capacity in 2005, to over 1,600 MW of capacity operational in the market today. The latest forecasts from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland as to the amount of renewable generation required to meet our 40% renewable electricity target is around 4,000 MW of operational capacity, subject to achieving our energy efficiency goals.

Currently, approximately 1,900 MW of renewable generation is connected to the grid, including over 1,600 MW of wind generation. A further 1,500 MW of renewable generation, almost all of which is new wind-generating capacity, has contracted with either EirGrid or ESB Networks.

The Commission for Energy Regulation, CER, operates a processing approach for wind projects looking to connect to the electricity grid. This allows for a strategic view to be taken of network requirements and serves to put in place efficient connection solutions to cater for a large number of applications and to ensure optimum network development, minimising network costs and, where possible, avoidance of network bottlenecks. The EirGrid GRID25 strategy was devised to put in place the necessary infrastructure needed to underpin this market growth.

To date there have been three gates and in the latest Gate 3 phase some 3,900 MW of offers have issued to renewable generators. The take-up of Gate 3 offers cannot be quantified as yet. Somewhere around 500 MW of Gate 3 have accepted their offers to date and have already contracted with EirGrid or ESB Networks. It is expected that between what is already built in Gate 1 and Gate 2, and what has already contracted to build along with the remainder of Gate 3, is largely sufficient for the achievement of our 40% target, even if some Gate 3 developers ultimately decide not to accept their offer.

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