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

Jackie Cahill: Apologies have been received from Senator Paul Daly. Before we begin, I remind members, guests and persons in the Public Gallery to turn off their mobile phones. The purpose of the meeting is to examine solar energy and the agricultural industry. The committee will hear from representatives of the Irish Solar Energy Association in the first session, and of Teagasc in the second session....

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

Matt Carthy: Cuirim fáilte roimh gach uile dhuine. It is great to have this session on what is and should be a really positive story for Irish energy generation, but also for Irish agriculture. Frankly, it is shameful that we are hearing of difficulties in terms of farmers being able to participate in what should be a very positive story in the context of energy generation. Many of the issues...

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)

Dr. Tara Reale: Lightsource bp has ten farms in Northern Ireland that we developed four or five years ago. It is down to economics and a number of other factors but they work everywhere. In respect of the question about the size of the scheme, it really comes down to the amount of grid capacity that is available at any location. That is a perfect example of a decent relatively small...

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

...to the point, it is the north of the country so it is a 32-26-county solution, as has been seen already. With regard to TAMS issues, I have been involved in a large programme with a large co-operative here to roll out solar on rooftops through TAMS to many dairy providers. We came across a number of obstacles. As Mr. Bolger said, there was an issue with not ring-fencing that...

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

...I would not characterise it as eagerness. We have been engaging with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage for some time. We have sent periodic letters and members of our association have engaged with it. I understand the next step to be a set of interim regulations involving some easing around much of the country, with an exclusion zone around airports while they do...

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

...they might come up again under other question areas. On network access, there is a missing piece in terms of farmers looking to export from the farm. A trial was put in place for mini-generation. It would be where farms normally set land in terms of what they would like to export. ESB Networks received 150 applications from people who fit the scale and it was closed immediately,...

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

Mr. Conall Bolger: It is fair to say that we believe this issue is really material. We are definitely seeing evidence that it is dissuading farmers from participating. One can understand why. It is a very sensitive matter. There is also the demographic change in farming. In 2016, two in five farmers were over the age of 65. This is obviously a serious concern. With the benefit of...

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

Dr. Tara Reale: We are seeing this becoming more and more of a major issue. If we look back to when the threshold was initially implemented, which, I believe, was 2017, we can see that the trend in Ireland followed that in the UK and Northern Ireland, where it was for these small, community-sized solar farms that generated 4 MW or 5 MW peak. For such operations, probably a maximum of only...

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

Mr. Conall Bolger: As we said previously, we are due to see something in summer. There will be set of interim regulations and an easing, except around the airports. There will probably be more studies done in that regard. There will also be a process for a strategic environmental assessment that we believe will run before arriving at final regulations. As I said previously, we have heard...

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

...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 to ESB Networks to operate and own. There is a lot of scope for the direct lines...

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

Mr. Gary Connolly: I can speak to that. On a smaller scale we found that battery systems can be used. Batteries really come into their own at a larger scale so we found that, especially on the dairy side of things, the cylinder is a thermal store in itself and we put kilowatt hours that would have been exported to the grid otherwise into the hot water store on that smaller scale on small...

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

Joe Flaherty: I thank all the speakers for coming in. It is like a lot of things in energy at the moment and we never start talking about the money so we will talk hypothetically. I have a 50 acre farm and I can connect to the grid and everything else. What is my return?

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

Joe Flaherty: That is good. The figure of 6 GW was mentioned and I ask the witnesses to flesh that out because it is slightly at odds with what the Minister has said. What do we need to happen to get to 6 GW?

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)

Joe Flaherty: That probably comes to the next question. I refer to farms that the ISEA has optioned at the minute and where the farmer has gone through the process of getting planning permission and risen the ire of his or her next-door neighbours and everything. A number of farmers are asking me what the delay is and why the projects are not coming through. I know Mr. Bolger said that there have to be...

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

Mr. Conall Bolger: The number one issue for the industry is getting access to the network. What happens is the developers cannot go into the grid process until they have planning. They cannot go into planning until they have optioned the land because that is good practice. At that point, depending on what has happened, the farmer could have been waiting a period of time. In the Millvale...

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

Joe Flaherty: I am a bit wiser on that now. I know the sector is fast-moving, that it is getting huge efficiencies, that it is becoming much more productive and that it is probably becoming more financially rewarding. Have we come to a point, given the move towards offshore wind energy, at which solar has taken precedence over wind farms on land?

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

Joe Flaherty: What about in terms of current profitability for the operators? I know Mr. Bolger has a vested interested in solar, but would it be much more financially prudent for a body such as Bord na Móna? It went with the wind farm in Mountdillon, which was ultimately unsuccessful. As Mr. Bolger sees it, would solar be more financially rewarding for such bodies, given the efficiencies in...

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

Mr. Conall Bolger: Ultimately, internationally, solar can be deployed quickly. A site can be built in months rather than years. If the connection process were faster and cheaper here, there would be a lot of good options, but it is also a product of the financial model. It is back to the numbers again, I am afraid. While there is a good solar resource in Ireland, and it is something we...