The upgraded national grid which is being put in place will provide a platform for Irish economic recovery and inward investment, according to EirGrid. During 2011, EirGrid completed approximately 80 km of new circuits as part of its Grid25 strategy and over 300 km of existing circuits were upgraded. A further 160 km of new circuits are at an advanced construction stage and are expected to be completed in 2012.

Implementation of the Grid25 programme is expected to create major benefits for all regions of Ireland. In addition, this coming September will see the completion of the East West Interconnector, which will electrically connect Ireland to the UK and beyond into Europe and will enable Ireland to participate in those electricity markets.

Dermot Byrne, chief executive of EirGrid, comments: “Business and job creation will benefit in a number of ways as we know that competition drives down prices, and that is attractive to new and existing investors. The first auction for capacity on the East West Interconnector will take place this summer, and this will enable Ireland to develop a new and indigenous sector – the energy export market. We have plenty of potential to develop our renewable energy resources here.”

He adds: “EirGrid recently announced a Eur500 million investment in a new electricity link between Munster and Leinster, and this, alongside other current or planned projects, will enable Ireland to have a 21st century grid, modern enough and flexible enough to cater for the requirements of future generations.”

The East West Interconnector project continues to progress on time for delivery in September 2012. This will bring an additional capacity of 500 MW (megawatts) of power to be traded in both directions. Benefits will include increased competitiveness, enhanced security of supply and the facilitation of renewable energy.

In the financial year ended 30th September 2011, EirGrid increased revenue to Eur470.7 million, from €443.8 million the previous year, and operating profit rose to €30.3 million, compared to €15.7 million in 2010. This increase in statutory profit largely reflects actual outturns in costs and revenues different to the assumptions made in setting EirGrid’s regulated tariffs, giving rise in this instance to an over-recovery. In accordance with normal regulatory practice, this will be corrected in future tariffs.

Renewable energy currently accounts for about 17% of total customer demand across the island or Ireland. The target in both jurisdictions is to reach 40% by 2020.

Wind power supplied an average of 5.3% of the UK’s demand for electricity for December and early January, reaching a record share of 12.2% on 28th December. As a result, carbon emissions from the UK’s electricity generators were cut by over 750,000 tonnes, equivalent to taking over 300,000 cars off the road.

Dr Gordon Edge, director of policy at RenewableUK, the trade association for the wind, wave & tidal industry, comments “Wind energy represents a new paradigm in electricity generation, allowing us to harness the power of the weather when it’s available, cutting our fossil fuel bills and lowering our carbon emissions. As we’re generating increasingly large amounts of electricity from wind, feeding those large volumes of power into the system represents an engineering challenge to the National Grid – a challenge we are pleased to see they met over Christmas.”

National Grid is responsible for balancing the output of the UK’s electricity generators with demand from consumers and businesses on a minute by minute basis. Integrating the variable output of wind generators involves taking a range of balancing actions, including reducing the rate at which fossil fuel generators consume fuel when wind output is higher. Last year, National Grid launched a new wind power forecasting system, allowing their engineers to more accurately predict output from the UK’s growing fleet of wind farms.

Stuart Young Consulting, with support from the John Muir Trust, has released a report studying the ability of wind power to make a significant contribution to the UK’s energy supply. It concludes that the average power output of wind turbines across Scotland is well below the rates often claimed by industry and government.

Indeed, says the report, for numerous extended periods of time all the wind turbines in Scotland linked to the National Grid muster less than 20MW of energy – that is enough power for a mere 6,667 households to boil their kettles for a cup of tea.

Helen McDade, head of policy at the John Muir Trust, the UK wild land conservation charity, says: “This report is a real eye opener for anyone who’s been wondering just how much power Scotland is getting from the fleet of wind turbines that have taken over many of our most beautiful mountains and hillsides. The answer appears to be not enough, and much less than is routinely claimed.”

Stuart Young, author of the report, comments: “Over the two-year period studied in this report, the metered wind farms in the UK consistently generated far less energy than wind proponents claim is typical. The intermittent nature of wind also gives rise to low wind coinciding with high energy demand. Sadly, wind power is not what it’s cracked up to be and cannot contribute greatly to energy security in the UK.”

He adds: “It was a surprise to find out just how disappointingly wind turbines perform in a supposedly wind-ridden country like Scotland. Based on the data, for one third of the time wind output is less than 10% of capacity, compared to the 30% that is commonly claimed.”

Production of electricity from wind reached a historical record on the 6th of September this year, with around 10% of all electricity delivered to consumers generated by the UK’s wind farms, according to data from the National Grid.

At the peak time of 8.30 pm on Monday 6th September, 1860MW was being generated – largely from Scotland – accounting for 4.7% of total generation at the time. National Grid also believes that if embedded wind generation (generation feeding directly into the low voltage local electricity networks by smaller wind farms) is taken into account wind generated about 10% of Great Britain’s power during the 24 hour period.

This is not including the contribution from other renewables such as hydro, which contributed a further 4%, according to data held by Elexon, the balancing and settlement code company for Great Britain. The total UK consumption during the 24 hours was 809.5GWh.

“We are expecting to see the contribution of electricity from wind gradually increase over the next decade, to around 30% of the UK’s total consumption. This news confirms that not only are the wind farms we have built so far starting to deliver, but that UK wind farm electricity yields are the best in Europe, and comparable with established technologies such as hydro,” says Maria McCaffery, chief executive of RenewableUK, the trade and professional body for the UK wind and marine renewables industries. “These figures underpin the strong contention that renewable energy – and wind energy in particular – is no longer alternative. It is on the scale and growing rapidly.”

The UK currently has 4,616.05MW of installed wind energy across 263 wind farms, with a further 2,716MW in construction and 6,126MW with planning consent. The industry has highlighted that added together this represents 13.5GW about to come on stream in the next few years. A further 10GW of wind energy projects in the planning system awaits determination.

“If we added together all the wind energy projects in planning to the projects already existing and about to come on stream, we would be three-quarters of the way to reaching our 2020 targets. If we count in the tremendous potential of offshore wind, the plan of turning the UK into a net energy exporter does not seem unlikely. Reaching our targets and unleashing the colossal opportunities wind energy brings to the UK is perfectly achievable,” Maria McCaffery adds.