* To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will review the categorisation of schools which generate their own electricity through renewable sources for example wind turbines, and instead place them in the not-for-profit farming and residential category and thereby promote schools’ participation in sustainable energy generation while avoiding the situation of schools being forced to supply energy for free to the national grid at certain times while having to pay for electricity at others.
– Seán Kyne TD
REPLY:
I have no statutory function in the categorisation of schools which generate their electricity through renewable sources.
The Commission for Energy Regulation is an independent statutory body with responsibility for regulation of electricity market in Ireland since 1999. In 2007, the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) published the ‘Arrangements for Micro-generation’ decision paper (CER/07/208), which outlined the technical and commercial arrangements for micro-generation including installation, safety, notifications to the network operator and metering for micro-generators that are sized at or below 11kW. In this paper, micro-generation was defined as generation from units that rate at or below 11kW.
In 2008, as part of the regulation of ESB Customers Supply’s retail tariffs, the CER approved a proposal from ESB Customer Supply to make a 9 cent payment for domestic micro-generation output from domestic customers. Non-domestic customers, including schools, were not included in the ESB Customer Supply proposal at that time. The CER also encouraged all suppliers to offer innovative products, which reward appropriately for any export by micro-generators and which could be extended to non-domestic micro-generators. In parallel to that, ESB Networks offered an initial 10 cent per kilowatt hour payment for output for domestic micro-generation, but this a voluntary rate introduced by the company itself and was not a regulated offering.
As prices in the retail market have now been fully deregulated, effective since 4th April, there is no longer scope for specifying a regulated tariff/payment for micro-generation in the retail market as part of the CER’s tariff setting process. However, individual supply companies remain free to make such offerings on a commercial basis.