Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the assistance available to encourage micro wind generation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15835/13]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Electric Ireland has been offering a 9c/kwh feed in tariff, on a commercial basis under specified terms and conditions, to domestic microgenerators since February 2009. This includes wind microgenerators and other technologies. No other electricity supply company has to date chosen to enter the market and to offer a microgeneration feed-in-tariff on a commercial basis, although the Commission for Energy Regulation invited them to do so.

ESB have indicated that they are currently 622 microgenerators (wind and other technologies) 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. SI 201 of 2012 was introduced last year to provide for the refund of VAT paid by farmers on qualifying equipment, purchased from 1 January 2012, for the purposes of micro-generation of electricity for use in a farm business. Again this is not limited to wind microgeneration.

In 2009, the SEAI initiated a pilot microgeneration programme. This involved 42 installations of various microgeneration 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 microgeneration could be incorporated into the forthcoming Better Energy: Financing scheme (Pay As You Save) in respect of energy efficiency measures. This will be further considered by my Department. In view of falling technology costs, my Department has also asked SEAI to update analysis on the costs of varying levels of support for microgeneration 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.