Ireland's Electricity Simulation

What will Ireland's Electricity mix look like in 2030 assuming

1. Demand will increase by the amount Eirgrid predict
2. 2030 will be an hour by hour weather copy of 2023.*
3. We will build the wind turbines we say we will.
4. Solar and battery trends keep going as they have for over a decade
5. The grid can handle the new power sources + demands

The code for this projection is here. 
* obviously the weather in any hour of the year won't be the same as that hour in 2023. But by copying a year you get to see how wind and solar peak and lull in an accurate way. Combining more years into an average loses the 'what happens if its dark and calm for a week' accuracy of copying one years weather.

At the moment Ireland gets a lot of wind power. But all the white here under the black line is met by fossil fuels and imports. How much white under the demand line will there be in future?

As wind, solar and battery roll out the amount of fossil fuels and imports needed decreases.

To take one example with these trends continuing in June 2030 Wind and Solar cover a lot of the power needs. With Battery holding enough to smooth out gaps 

On a day view of the year you can see solar has started to cover a lot of low wind times.

and by 2033 continuing trend growth of Solar really would start to cover a lot of demand

 

year	demand_twh	solar_twh	wind_twh	waste_twh	battery_used_twh	unmet_twh
2023	39.7	1.0	13.7	0.0	0.0	24.9
2024	41.2	1.4	16.2	0.0	0.0	23.7
2025	42.9	1.9	19.1	0.2	0.1	22.0
2026	44.6	2.6	22.6	0.7	0.2	20.0
2027	46.4	3.6	26.6	2.0	0.3	17.9
2028	48.2	4.9	31.4	4.3	0.6	15.7
2029	50.2	6.8	37.1	7.9	1.0	13.3
2030	52.2	9.4	43.7	13.3	1.7	10.6
2031	54.3	13.0	51.6	21.1	2.9	7.9
2032	56.4	17.9	60.9	31.8	4.3	5.1
2033	58.7	24.7	71.8	46.1	5.3	3.0
2034	61.1	34.1	84.8	65.1	5.4	1.9
2035	63.5	47.1	100.0	90.0	5.3	1.2
2036	66.0	64.9	118.0	122.6	5.2	0.5
2037	68.7	89.6	139.3	165.1	4.8	0.1

Predictions of ten plus years are really not to be trusted. But the reduction to 10.6Twh in 2030 from 25Twh is something this government we just elected controls. We make planning and other decisions all the time that decide if we meet these trend increases in demand, solar, wind and batteries. We can decarbonise fast enough to prevent billions in fines in 2030 if we follow this path.

Have Batteries for Ireland's excess wind energy

Ireland regularly produces more energy, from wind, than it needs at night. 95GWh is more than the increase that happens 5-7pm. This means that if we could store the wind energy at night it would significantly help during peak hours of the evening.

How much would this cost? 

"Benchmark Lithium ion Battery Cell prices have fallen to $66.5/kWh in September (Benchmark’s Global Weighted Average); falling just shy of 20% this year". So if we store €60.38 worth of kWh energy that means the battery pays for itself.

At retail prices that is 190 stores and discharges. There is a wholesale retail difference but still six months payback time is so short as to still make it really economical.

Solar already significantly add to the electricity supply which means you might be able to get two discharges on a battery a day. Once in the smaller morning peak using overnight wind power and again in the evening using the days solar.

We have excess wind energy, and next summer solar, so often that grid scale lithium batteries could pay for themselves in months.