Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The blackout yesterday in Spain and Portugal was a jarring but very real reminder of the vulnerability of our energy systems. In five seconds, the Iberian power network lost 15 GW. That is about 60% of normal consumer demand there. By way of comparison, the peak that has been recorded in Ireland is 6 GW, so two and a half times the full consumption of Ireland went off that grid in five seconds. It is incredible that that happened. Rail and metro services stopped, traffic systems stopped, lights were not working and many other things went. Some 60 million people on that peninsula were impacted, directly or indirectly.

Power is back, more or less, but many questions remain, fundamental questions as to what caused the outage and whether it could happen here. We are not immune to extreme events. We saw what happened with Storm Éowyn, particularly in the west of Ireland, and the challenges getting power back. Communities were left off air for two weeks-plus as the ESB worked hard to get them back on stream. Researchers in the University of Galway warned recently that though Storm Éowyn caused significant damage, we were lucky. It could have been even worse. I do not think any event in recent years has highlighted the vulnerability we have, particularly in power, like Storm Éowyn, and it could have been much worse.

The Commission is saying there are lessons to be learned by the European Union from the blackout. I believe that, because it was an international impact, Spain has to give a detail report to the Commission within three months, setting out what happened, the impact and what steps Spain will take to ensure it does not happen again. We need to plug into that and see what changes we need to make, if any, on the Irish side to minimise the risk of this happening to us. We will have to do this again and again to build resilience into the network.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Ó Muirí for raising the matter, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister. The Deputy is right that we are not immune to extreme events and he rightly illustrated and highlighted our vulnerability in terms of 2.5 times our usage having gone in five seconds. He is bang on. It is important to note that we do not yet know the causes of yesterday’s event. This kind of cascading event has happened to power grids before. We remember the north-east of the US in 2003, when 55 million people were affected, in particular in New York, and more recently in Chile in February of this year, when the vast majority of the 19 million customers lost electricity for a number of hours.

EirGrid regularly tests the resilience of our grid to extreme events such as these as part of National Emergency Co-ordination Group emergency exercises. EirGrid’s recently published generation adequacy assessment shows a significant reduction in risks from recent years. This substantial improvement is in large part due to the mitigations from the Commission for Regulation of Utilities-led programme of actions to ensure security of electricity supply.

New temporary emergency generation capacity has now been delivered in four locations, namely, North Wall and Huntstown in Dublin, Shannonbridge, County Offaly, and Tarbert, County Kerry. Additionally, Moneypoint power station is converting from coal to heavy fuel oil and has been contracted to remain open until 2029 as an “out of market” unit to provide power only when required by the system operator for electricity security. Moreover, a number of power generation projects have been delivered over the last few years, including capacity market projects, renewables and a new 500 MW interconnector to Great Britain that began operation this year.

It is important to note that conventional generation is still critical for the secure operation of a power system. The spinning motion of conventional fossil fuel generation provides inertia to the system that can protect frequency oscillations from cascading through the system and causing other generators to trip off. EirGrid is already taking a range of actions to ensure our system security during the energy transition. It is also continuing to assess how it can securely integrate further variable renewables at any one time. For example, EirGrid is procuring low carbon inertia services to replace the need for running conventional generation in a highly renewable grid. Ireland has successfully implemented up to 75% variable renewables sources on the grid at any one time and these inertia services will allow us to go further.

The Department has also commissioned the International Energy Agency to conduct a study of our electricity security in the context of our energy transition to 2035. This study will be focused on the role of the power sector in achieving that secure transition. It will help Ireland to plan the integration of power sector planning within the wider energy sector as we electrify heat, transport and industry. Furthermore, it will provide an independent internationally peer reviewed assessment of what Ireland needs as we move to a highly renewables system to ensure both security of supply, that is, whether we have enough supply to meet demand and system security, that is, the ability of the electricity system to retain a normal state or to return to a normal state after any type of event as soon as possible. The Department expects to receive a copy of this report before the end of the year and will publish it thereafter.

Deputy Ó Muirí's points are well made and I will bring his concerns back to the Minister. I congratulate Deputy Ó Muirí on his appointment as Chair of a committee and I wish him well in his term ahead.

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I appreciate the Minister of State's comments. I welcome the news that temporary emergency generation capacity has got to four power stations, two in Dublin and two down the country. I also welcome the IEA’s study of our electricity security with regard to energy transition. The one point I want to repeat concerns the European experience. We were very happy to welcome, and it was great to see, crews coming in from France, Germany, Austria and the UK during Storm Éowyn as a response to that incident and the clean-up and restoration work that was required. We need to do something similar in reverse given what has happened in Spain and Portugal. We need to find a way to learn, if there is anything to learn from what has happened there. I do not know what that mechanism is, how we share that information or what level of co-operation there is. Perhaps it is down to encouraging EirGrid to look internationally and to contact the commission. I again thank the Minister of State for taking this item. It is an issue that will get more and more important in the years to come.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)
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I again thank Deputy Ó Muirí for raising the matter, which is of critical importance. The Deputy is right that there must be learnings from what happened yesterday, whatever the cause of the Iberian blackout is, and that has not been confirmed yet. The authorities in Portugal and Spain are continuing to assess the cause and it may take time. The point the Deputy makes is that we must take learnings from this.

In Ireland, EirGrid recently published a resource adequacy assessment, which has forecast a significant improvement in terms of security of supply over the next ten years. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities-led programme of actions has delivered a number of actions to ensure security of electricity supply since 2021, namely, temporary emergency generation and the conversion of Moneypoint from coal to heavy fuel oil. Moreover, a number of generation projects have been delivered in recent years, including capacity market projects, renewables and, as I said, a new 500 MW interconnector to Britain has begun operation. Emergency exercises regularly take place with key stakeholders to test the resilience of our national grid in extreme scenarios like this.

As the Deputy rightly said, it is incumbent on us to take the learnings, to plan and to understand what has happened here, and to bring the learnings and best outcomes for our country to ensure we have security of supply. I will bring the Deputy’s concerns and his points back to the Minister.