Introduction
Our electricity grid was designed to accommodate a small number of fossil-fuel generators around the country. In the 1920s when it was built, this design was sufficient. But now, with hundreds of wind and solar farms generating power, more than a million more people living in the state, and a society that is highly dependent on electricity to live and work, sometimes, our power lines do not have enough capacity to transport electricity from where it is generated to where it needs to go.
Sometimes when this situation occurs, wind and solar farms (or fossil-fuel generators) are instructed to shut off or produce less power to ease the bottleneck. This is called a constraint and you can read more about how and where constraints occur across the island here.
The more constraints increase, the more carbon emissions we produce and the higher our bills because of the gas generation brought on to replace the constrained wind farms.
Preventing new wind farms
As well as affecting existing wind farms these constraint levels can also prevent the construction of new wind farms.
Wind Energy Ireland believes there are approximately 1,000 MW of onshore wind energy projects which have received full planning permission and are ready for construction but are simply financially unviable when local constraint levels are so high.
Think of it, for a moment, as if a restaurant-owner was trying to keep their business going when 10-15 per cent of their stock was simply disappearing every year? It would just not be possible to continue.
This is particularly true for offshore wind farms. They are typically much larger than onshore wind farms. The state of the electricity grid means that building a wind farm off the north-west coast of Ireland, for example, is simply not going to happen. If we are already struggling to get power out of those regions for onshore wind farms it simply will not happen at all for an offshore wind farm.
People will not build wind farms to stand idle so unless we can make the grid stronger to enable more wind – and solar – farms to connect, then we will be unable to develop the renewable energy Ireland needs.
The solution
There are many solutions to this problem, like dynamic line rating, battery storage, new interconnectors and demand-response technologies which can lower demand when there is tight supply. But the bottom line is that to relieve the congestion on the transmission system, we need to upgrade our existing grid and to build new high-capacity power lines.
You can help make this a reality by supporting this movement. Tell our leaders you want a stronger grid that can support 100% renewable electricity. Sign the open letter and pledge your support today.
