Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 November 2022
5. Deputy Darren O'Rourke asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications if he has engaged with a company (detail supplied) and its partners with a view to expanding its pilot programme, which uses surplus wind energy to provide households at risk of fuel poverty with hot water; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55347/22]
View answerThis question is to ask the Minister if he has engaged with a company, EnergyCloud, and its partners with a view to expanding its pilot programme, which uses surplus wind energy to provide households at risk of fuel poverty with hot water and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Officials in my Department met with representatives of the social enterprise referred to in the question. I welcome the trial, which I understand is in co-operation with Clúid Housing, and I look forward to seeing the results. The Government is acutely aware of the impact the recent increases in global energy prices is having on households. A €2.4 billion package of supports was implemented last year and a package of once-off measures worth €2.5 billion was included in the recent budget. This included a new electricity cost emergency benefit scheme and an extensive range of social protection measures to support people with the increased cost of living.
The national retrofit plan, as I said earlier, sets out how the Government will achieve its targets to retrofit the equivalent of 500,000 homes to a building energy rating, BER, of B2 by 2030. This will improve the energy efficiency and reduce energy waste in these homes. To support the plan, the budget also provided for the following: €337 million for home energy upgrades next year, including free upgrades for 6,000 homeowners at risk of energy poverty; a continuation of the 80% grant rate we talked about earlier; and €87 million to be spent in respect of an energy efficiency programme for social housing.
A new action plan to combat energy poverty will set out all the measures being implemented ahead of the coming winter, as well as key longer-term measures to ensure that those least able to afford increased energy costs are supported and protected.
That new plan will be published in the coming weeks.
On EnergyCloud, I am not directly familiar with the project but it uses online data-sharing systems to enhance energy efficiency. Those efficiency gains can be used, if I understand correctly, to provide for those energy services for other households and that technology-based digital and clean-energy energy-efficiency revolution. The concept is exactly the sort of project that I believe has a future. I do not have the specific details of the company but my officials tell me that it seems to be an interesting prospect and we are supportive of the concept. We look forward to the results of the trial.
In terms of the outline, the Minister is correct. EnergyCloud is working with Clúid Housing. Explicitly, it is taking what would otherwise be waste renewable energy, mostly, during the night, and heating the hot water tanks in the homes of many people on their pilot.
It said, as recently as Sunday night, that had it the capacity at scale it could have heated, because of the amount of surplus wind energy, 1.8 million hot water tanks in homes across the State. That is, obviously, the upper end, but it gives one the sense of the scale and opportunity that is there.
Particularly given the energy crisis we are in, I would appeal to the Minister - I have raised this with him on a number of occasions and I know others have as well - to take a personal interest in this, look at the opportunity of it and look at the barriers that might exist in terms of technology or engineering. It is a great opportunity to do something positive in the renewables and fuel-poverty sphere.
Not meaning to be rude, but I checked on my phone the EirGrid dashboard, which we all look at, I am sure, on a regular basis. One can see wind power is providing 55% of our needs as we speak.
The Deputy is absolutely right. Increasingly, there are moments - we have seen it in the past month or six weeks - where the scale of the wind power resource available to us is beyond compare. Particularly in the middle of the night, that power, which is effectively coming in at almost a zero marginal cost as prices are very low in the wholesale market in those time periods, finds it difficult to find a home or a use. We need to do everything, both on the domestic scale in the likes of this project but also among big industrial and other users, to switch our demand to those periods when the wind is blowing strongest, particularly in the middle of the night. In that way, we can save emissions and save householders much expenditure. The benefit for the energy system is that the curtailment cost at present, where we have power available but we do not have demand for it, was the most significant reason our bid recently in the auction system went up higher than we expected. The curtailment of constraints on what is a very high renewable system now in many instances is costing us. Using that so that one keeps the costs down and one keeps the energy suppliers paid rather than the curtailment of their power is absolutely the future direction we need to go in.
I would ask the Minister and his Department officials to meet with EnergyCloud and for the Minister to take a personal interest in this. There is a pilot under way. There are significant, serious and credible stakeholders involved in this who are committed to it and who have got the pilot up and running. It is already proving a success. The pilot has a tangible benefit to those households that are part of it. It is a significant opportunity. I would appeal to the Minister to take a personal interest in it and to commit to meeting with EnergyCloud.
I am sure to do this at scale there are other considerations that must be made. I ask the Minister and his departmental officials to work with EnergyCloud to maximise the opportunity there.
My officials have met the company, as I said, and were enthused in reporting back to me.
In April 2021, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage launched the scheme. The Government is fully appraised and supportive of it. The project was being run through Clúid Housing where the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage has a particular interest but that will not preclude me from following up and keeping a keen eye on the results from it. It has implications, not only for the housing sector but for the energy sector too. I will keep in touch with the project.
