Post: Ireland faces second worst winter power cuts across EU

Ireland faces second worst winter power cuts across EU

Ireland faces up to 6.25 hours without electricity this winter, the second highest outage in the EU after France, according to the European Association for the Cooperation of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E).

In its early view of winter report, published on 20 October ENTSO-E said Ireland could face “system stress” as early as November or December. This compares to last winter when the estimated shortage (loss of load expectation) was 17.4 hours. The standard is eight hours per year.

ENTSO-E’s assessment is much lower than recent estimates by EirGrid, which put the figure at potentially 51 hours of outage over the five-month winter period. EirGrid also said there is an expectation that the system will enter the Alert State at times of low wind and low interconnector imports. There is also a high probability of the system entering the Emergency State at times, due to insufficient generation being available to meet the demand. The report noted that electricity consumers could potentially be without supply for approximately 4 hours over the winter period.

In France, individual customers face up to 26 hours without electricity across the winter, due to low nuclear generation, the ENTSO-E agency said. Risks were also identified in Malta and Cyprus. Cyprus is the only other EU country, aside from Ireland, that has no energy connections with the European mainland. Norway and Sweden also face outages without cuts in energy use, the report said.

According to ENTSO-E, cutting electricity use by 5% in peak times could reduce risks “well below” acceptable levels and a 10% reduction would mean risks would be “relieved substantially”.

The European Commission has unveiled a suite of proposals to try to curb high gas and electricity prices. The Commission put forward proposals on 18 October, including a temporary “maximum dynamic price” on trades at the Title Transfer Facility (TTF) gas hub in the Netherlands, which serves as a benchmark price for gas trading in Europe. The upper price limit, which is still to be defined, would be temporary until the EU puts together a new price index to complement the TTF, which better reflects the growing importance of liquified natural gas (LNG) on the EU market.

The plan also includes proposals to have at least 15% of the bloc’s gas storage filled by joint purchases ahead of Spring 2023 and a mandatory solidarity mechanism for gas sharing between EU countries during times of emergency.

GridBeyond Managing Director UK and Ireland Mark Davis said:

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