Ciarán Ahern: Warns Ireland Lacks Targets for Long-Term Storage

I understand that we have a national electricity storage policy framework, but in your submission today you say that there are no targets for energy storage backed by a long term revenue mechanism. So essentially I think what you're saying is long duration storage won't be delivered at the scale we need unless the incentives are changed by government. So are you working with government on this and what level of engagement have you had to date? The lack of targets is something that was addressed in the electricity storage policy framework that you referenced and it did set out an action to identify what the long term need for energy storage is in Ireland beyond 2030s. Right now we have indicative targets for 2030 that EirGrid have set out. We don't know what's needed beyond that, which is an issue for an industry that's trying to develop projects, get projects through planning, get them in grid connections ready to deliver and we don't know exactly what is going to be cured or what the government or EirGrid actually needs. So we are engaged with the government, we are engaged with the department quite regularly on this. It is a bit concerning for us that we haven't yet seen the analysis progress on identifying what those long term energy storage targets are. So that's certainly something we're calling for because until we know what the actual aim is, how can we procure it? How can we develop the market or the policy to deliver it? Sorry to interrupt. Have you been given any kind of timelines or indications from the department when you might expect to get clarity on that? So it's a little bit vague in the policy. So the policy sets an end date of 2028 to have the analysis done and the procurement in place. Obviously that's a year and a half away and we have not yet seen progress on the analysis to back that up yet. So it would certainly cause a lot of concern for us and our members that that route to market will not be in place by 2028 given where we are today. And is that having any kind of a chilling effect in terms of investment or stalling investment in this area? It is. And we mentioned the 10 gigawatt pipeline of storage projects that are in development. A lot of that is what we would call early stage development. So they have either secured a land right or they've gone and put in a planning application or they're holding a consented planning site. That will lapse over time. They've put money down, these developers at risk, and they're waiting to see how the market will develop. They will not keep those projects going if it doesn't develop. They will move those projects, they will go to other countries, they'll spend their money elsewhere where there is more certainty. So it certainly is a risk if we don't, for want of a better word, get a move on and provide that certainty for the development pipeline that will miss the opportunity. Might be something as a committee we could maybe write to the department about or just try and put a bit of pressure on. And I don't think you mentioned this in your statement, but do you think the government should reintroduce kind of household supports for batteries again? I know there previously were some, they were removed, but do you have a view on that? Yeah, I think I did address this a little bit earlier, but I'm happy to go over it. We're seeing the battery cost decline to an extent that it does seem to be economic and the payback periods for most households seem to be able to do it with the solar grant in place. I would say if there is targeted supports, that might be more appropriate for vulnerable households or energy poor households where that might be more required. Thanks, and I appreciate I was late to the party, so apologies for that. You represent 80 companies approximately in the industry, and there is a lot of focus on batteries, but I believe that there is huge potential, at least my brother who works for Codema, the energy agency, keeps telling me there's huge potential for heat storage with district heating and thermal energy storage, and these kind of technologies can be far cheaper and less resource intensive than batteries, so I just wonder are you representing anyone who works in that space, and are there any plans for this kind of thermal energy storage in Ireland? Yeah, so I would caveat that we are an electricity storage association, so we represent technologies that store electricity and then convert it back to electricity, so we don't necessarily represent technologies that convert electricity to heat in the form of thermal storage, that would be associations like district energy, or even there's an association called Ireland Electrified, which is representing the electrification sector in Ireland, which would represent those technologies, and that's recently been set up. But I can speak to the fact that there is huge potential in the heat sector, and the technologies are readily available when you talk about thermal storage tanks, for instance, they can store heat and water and then release that for either space heating or for an industrial purpose, whether it's an industrial heat process, so there is big potential there. As I understand it, the policy barriers are more around the cost of electricity compared to gas, so typically if you're a factory or a household even, you have an alternative between a gas boiler or thermal storage or heat pump, and the electricity cost is a particular disincentive at the moment, and a lot of that electricity cost, it doesn't have to be that way essentially, so a lot of electricity costs are regulated in terms of network charges or the PSO levy or imperfections, there can be changes made to those charges to incentivise more flexible use of electricity, so you can think of a hot water tank that can store energy overnight when the price is cheap, and then use that during the day, if the right price signals are there, there could be an incentive for it. Just a final point I'll make on us as an association, so lithium ion batteries are the most common form of battery storage today, because it's the most deployable, it's the most understood, it's operating in many countries, it's been operating in Ireland for five years, but we do represent newer forms of energy storage, there's a project in, for instance, two projects I'll name, a project in County Donegal, which is an iron air technology, that's a US company called Form Energy which are developing that patent technology which uses iron air and water and it can store electricity for very long durations, up to 100 hours, which is quite different from your typical lithium ion battery storage which might go to max 8 or 10 hours duration of storage today, and then there's another project by a company called Energy Dome in County Offaly which uses compressed CO2 to store electricity in a dome shape and that can store energy for 10 hours and beyond, so there are new technology companies that we are representing and they're seeing Ireland as a really interesting opportunity to deploy their technologies because we are a system with a lot of wind energy and a lot of constraints on our grid, so the need for energy storage is very clear. Again it goes down to the certainty for those companies to invest in Ireland over the long term is what they require. I just might add one point on to Bobby's point there, I suppose each of them different technologies has obviously different use cases as well, so the 100 hour technology isn't maybe going to be playing in possibly the same market as your half hour fast frequency response battery, so having all them technologies on the one system obviously creates, that's where we need to get to ultimately. And just then on your point around maybe certainty and what investors need to see, like I suppose looking at maybe the solar and wind industry where planning and grid connections are the number one maybe showstopper there, I think for us in the storage sector the number one maybe barrier to investment is that route to market that we would have been chatting to through there, so it's just emphasising that point. Okay, thank you.