Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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136. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will allow a school (details supplied) in County Galway to credit the surplus energy that is generated by their active wind turbine by selling it back to the national grid and thereby gaining income to pay other bills at the school; if they may be registered as a business if necessary for this purpose; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22083/13]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Currently, electricity suppliers are not required to offer a feed-in-tariff for microgenerators. At present, Electric Ireland, on a commercial basis, is the only electricity supplier to offer a feed-in-tariff to domestic microgenerators. They offer a tariff of 9 cent per kilowatt hour for electricity exported to the grid to domestic customers under specified conditions.

The Commission for Energy Regulation, in the past, wrote to all electricity suppliers inviting them, on a voluntary and commercial basis, to introduce schemes for microgenerators. However, to date none of the suppliers, apart from Electric Ireland, has chosen to do so.

In terms of current supports for renewable electricity generation, it is noteworthy that the REFIT scheme operated by my Department does not set lower limits. There are currently some very small hydro plants operating in the scheme, as well as some small landfill gas and anaerobic digestion (AD) plants.

In order to inform further development of microgeneration policy, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) initiated a pilot microgeneration programme in 2009. This involved 42 installations of various microgeneration technologies. A final monitoring report on the performance of the installations and learning from the programme is awaited from the SEAI.

SEAI has also been asked to provide my Department with analysis of other means through which the microgeneration sector could be supported, apart from through a feed-in-tariff funded from the Public Service Obligation. In view of falling technology costs, the 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 going forward.

I have no function in the categorisation of electricity market participants which is a matter for the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER), the independent regulator.