Results 1-16 of 16 for solar power segment:8249258

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Mr. Gary Connolly: To get to 6 GW we are talking about a blend of the utility scale projects and we are probably talking about 4.5 GW to 5 GW of utility scale solar power. I can talk through what that looks like in a minute. The remainder would be customer scale solar power, which is essentially solar panels on rooftops across the country. We have work under way with MaREI, the research...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Mr. Conall Bolger: With solar, what you get is a predictable power source. It tracks the hours in a day so you know when it is going to come on, peak and go away. International experience shows that the level of error on the forecast is less than 1% so we know what is going to do. Obviously, you get different seasons so in winter, the peak tends to be a bit lower and the days a bit...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Mr. Conall Bolger: I thank the Chairman. On behalf of the Irish Solar Energy Association I thank the committee for the invitation to address it on the topic of solar energy and the agriculture industry. I am CEO of ISEA. I am joined by Dr. Reale, head of business development UK and Ireland with Lightsource bp, and Mr. Connolly, commercial director with Activ8 Solar Energies. ISEA was...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Jackie Cahill: I thank the witnesses for this informative session. The roadblocks restricting the potential of solar farming could be removed easily enough. We will put Deputy Leddin's proposal to the Minister for Finance and, hopefully, that will remove one of them. Access to the grid is the major stumbling block that we must overcome. If solar farming is to work, whether on land or on roofs, access to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

...get a distribution licence. ESB Networks has this. If, for example, a community centre or an agrifood business are connected into the public electricity network and then it is proposed to build a solar farm just across the road, you cannot just link the two up. The operator of that solar farm goes off to build connections and all the necessary infrastructure, which is then handed over...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Dr. John Upton: There is some documentation which lists the export factor that applies to solar mini-generation schemes whereby 35% of the power generated on-site could be exported and the rest should be used within the farm gate. That is the only other one I am aware of.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Matt Carthy: These companies then are getting good value from the solar power providers.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Matt Carthy: ...to overcome the difficulty. Returning to a point I was making, we, in essence, have a law that is preventing the extraction into the national grid of electricity that has been generated through solar power. This is crazy. There has been a great amount of talk about potential farm diversification benefits. If anything, one would have a fear that there would be no actual food...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

...was asked as to why there has not been more of that rooftop-type stuff. If one looks at the scenario where the dairy farmer is using 50% to 60% of what they are generating, and the rest of that power cannot go anywhere, then that is not a very good economic incentive for a dairy farmer to invest in this technology. The areas are relatively small in respect of the area required, even in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Dr. Laurence Shalloo: Yes, absolutely, but there are barriers. If we take the dairy farm Dr. Upton talked about and one puts in the solar panels and is using 30% of that power for water heating and 30% for cooling, can that remaining 40% then be sold back to the grid? Is that a barrier to adoption of this at farm level? Perhaps with these grid connections, that is something that needs to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Victor Boyhan: I welcome Dr. Upton and Dr. Shalloo to the committee and thank them. This is an important area of discussion and consideration for the committee. Our focus this evening is on solar energy and the agriculture industry. We all know the main benefits of solar and agriculture which Dr. Upton pointed out. They are enhanced energy security, farm diversification and the income that is related to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

...otherwise into the hot water store on that smaller scale on small dairy farms. As we got into larger farms actual lithium battery storage is an option for both peak shaving and moving into virtual power plants. Even then one moves into the utility grade solar and that is where the batteries really come into their own.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

...process, your allocation is not ring fenced from the other elements of your TAMS allowance so if you have undertaken other modernisation measures, you might not have quite the space left to go after the solar side of it and as the Deputy rightly pointed out, there are restrictions on export, which mean that people are essentially not allowed to spill on to the grid. What that means is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Mr. Conall Bolger: I will respond to the questions in reverse order, if that is okay. As for on-the-rooftop solar panels and the exclusion of airports, we are not convinced that it is that serious a concern. My colleague, Dr. Reale, highlighted Belfast International Airport, where you can see the panels from the planes when coming in. Rotterdam The Hague Airport has just opened a 14 MW...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

Joe Flaherty: ...all of us. I will make a point about accessing the network, which we have discussed, and direct line. As a case in point, I know of a large company involved in agrifeed that wants to do its own solar farm and wants the power, which is a significant player in agrifeeds. As to where the witnesses are at, and they have laid out the roadmap and where we want to get to, how realistic is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Solar Energy and the Agricultural Industry: Discussion (4 May 2022)

...to grapple with as a country. The direct lines and the summer load correlation is not something I fully appreciated but it is a very interesting point. If many of the data centres could get in solar complemented with a battery system and maybe some other system, and there are some models where they could perhaps look at doing something with an anaerobic digester, such as biogas and...