Nearly half of the country’s electricity came from renewable sources during the month of March, according to provisional data from EirGrid.
Ireland’s elecrticity grid operator said 49% of electricity last month was renewable, similar to the level in February which was 48%.
Wind was the biggest source of renewable energy at 40.1%
3.3% came from solar with other renewables making up a further 5.5%.
EirGrid said that spring sunshine and a growth in solar power connected to Ireland’s grid (grid-scale solar farms) resulted in a number of solar records on the power system in March, with this trend anticipated to continue over the coming months.
Its data showed that on 21 March, a new peak for grid-scale solar was achieved contributing 983.46MW to Ireland’s electricity mix.
This comes close to 1GW (1000 MW), which is enough to power roughly 500,000 customers.
This follows a record of 979 MW hit on 19 March and 950 MW reached on 6 March.
These figures relate to grid-scale solar, from larger solar farms, and do not account for rooftop solar on homes and businesses, known as embedded solar.
Gas represented the bulk of the remainder, making up 34.9% of the month’s electricity supply. A further 16.3% was imported via interconnection.
Charlie McGee, EirGrid’s System Operational Manager, said: “While solar power is currently a relatively small component of the overall fuel mix across a month, these record peaks demonstrate its ever-increasing importance as a source of renewable energy in Ireland as we work towards a more sustainable and renewable ready electricity grid.”
“Looking in particular at the instantaneous power that grid-scale solar can provide, it can meet over 20% of demand at times,” said Mr McGee.
“It’s also interesting to see how much of an impact rooftop solar is having on overall system demand,” he said. “On brighter days less of Ireland’s electricity needs are now served by large scale grid connected generation. This is helping to further reduce our reliance on non-renewable sources of electricity.”
