It is easy to discern a reflective personality and a strong engineer mindset in the man leading the ESB
ESB chief executive Paddy Hayes: 'Floating is happening and developing...we believe that there is the capability off the west Coast and we’re optimistic about being able to harness it.” Photograph: © Fran Veale for The Irish Times
customers. “We were really pleased that we were able to bring prices down last November and in March. It’s a really competitive retail market at the moment, which is good for customers.” It is undergoing its largest transformation since its foundation, with a target of decarbonising the electricity sector by 2040. That, Hayes says, is critical to providing clean energy for other sectors with a view to climate neutrality by 2050.
He notes the “quiet revolution of solar” with 1,000MW connected to the grid, about 16 per cent of the system peak. In microgeneration, more than 90,000 people have connections with ESB Networks. “ is really super to see customers getting involved in the energy transition for themselves,” he says. “We’re determined to take Moneypoint off coal by 2025. So it’s in its last full year of being available ... we’ve agreed that we’ll make it available then for the following four years or so ... 900MW of capacity is important to hold as an insurance policy for energy security.”
There is no rowback on green hydrogen though some recent analysis questions its viability. Its use is likely to be “primarily for storage”, Hayes says. While 20 years ago Ireland was criticised for not pursuing wind energy early enough, he says ESB has been able to learn from experiences of manufacturers and to install turbines at good value.
Hayes welcomes the Government’s regime to harness offshore wind capabilities and designating areas for development through DMAPs – sequencing fixed-bottom turbines in the east and south coast, with the west coast destined for floating. He hopes a DMAP for the west is finalised in a timely way. We meet at ESB’s headquarters on Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin, where the ESB control centre is commissioning aeroderivative gas turbines . A contract for a 300MW open cycle gas turbine for Poolbeg is also being signed – just in case investments “that you hope will almost never run but are available to run should the system get tight”.
For the average person or business getting a grid connection is now a fairly straightforward process, though parts of the system have more capacity than others, he says. There’s a lot of investment needed, however, to increase capacity to be able to take lots of different distributed energy sources. There will be “an ongoing challenge to develop grid capacity appropriately and efficiently ... in a way that’s affordable and to match the growing requirement for renewable energy”.
The key overall lever is hiring more people and building supply chains. Already there are 1,000 people more in the organisation since before the pandemic. It now employs 76 nationalities. With big demand for network technicians, its apprenticeship programme is taking in 100 people a year, 26 of whom were women this year.
Ireland's renewable energy projects target is 1,600MW a year but is currently falling short of that. Photograph: iStock
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