Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Green Party)
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Question 293: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the number of generators and their size currently operating under the ESB support initiative for micro-generators; the number of applications that are being processed; the reasons for assisting 4,000 generators only; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35176/10]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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There are currently 302 generators operating in the ESB Microgeneration scheme with a total connected capacity of 1709.17kW.

The types of technology in the scheme are as follows:

Wind Turbine installations = 261 in total

PV installations = 39 in total

Hydro Turbines installations = 2 in total

Wind Turbine installations comprise approximately 93.5% of total microgeneration connected capacity.

· PV installations comprise approximately 6% of total microgeneration connected capacity.

· Hydro Turbine installations comprise approximately 0.5% of total microgeneration connected capacity.

A total of some 307,048kWh were exported by ESB microgeneration customers between 30th September 2009 and 14th September 2010.

The breakdown by technology type is:

· A total of 267,760kWh were exported by Wind Turbine installations.

· A total of 38,340kWh were exported by PV installations.

· A total of 948kWh were exported by Hydro Turbine installations.

The purpose of the 4000 generator limit was to place an initial boundary on ESB Networks commitment, with a view to getting a microgeneration tariff scheme up and running.

ESB Customer Supply currently has 15 microgeneration customer applications in progress. ESB Networks deal with a large number of enquiries on the microgeneration scheme, many of these are general enquiries. It is only at the point where import / export meters are installed and the customer contacts ESB Customer Supply that ESB Customer Supply become involved in the customer's application.