Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the progress, if any, in facilitating schools and community organisations from receiving credits for the unused electricity generated by their wind turbines which is currently fed into the national grid without any recompense to the micro-generators; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15234/13]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Electric Ireland has been offering a 9c/kwh feed in tariff, on a commercial basis under specified terms and conditions, to domestic micro-generators since February 2009. No other electricity supply company has to date chosen to enter the market and to offer a micro-generation feed-in-tariff on a commercial basis, although the Commission for Energy Regulation invited them to do so.

ESB have indicated that there are currently 622 micro-generators connected to the distribution grid, of which 550 are in Electric Ireland’s Domestic Micro-generation Export Tariff Payment Scheme. All Electric Ireland customers in the micro-generation scheme are domestic customers, as it is a domestic scheme only. However, not all domestic micro-generators are on Electric Ireland’s domestic micro-generation export tariff payment scheme, as they are with other electricity suppliers who don’t offer such a scheme to their customers.

In 2009, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) initiated a pilot micro-generation programme. This involved 42 installations of various micro-generation technologies. Monitoring of the installations took place and is now complete. A final monitoring report on the performance of the installations and learning from the programme is expected shortly from SEAI. This will inform future policy development.

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has also provided my Department with some initial analysis on whether micro-generation could be incorporated into the new Pay As You Save Scheme, to be launched soon in respect of energy efficiency measures. This will be further considered by my Department.

In view of falling technology costs, the Department has also asked SEAI to update analysis on the costs of varying levels of support for micro-generation technologies, with a view to considering how the sector could be supported in the future. I understand that SEAI has recently engaged specialist assistance in this regard.