How much battery power is there in 2030?

 This post here estimated there would be about 16.5GWh of Grid scale batteries power in ireland in 2030.   an actual expert said 13.5GWh. Eirgrid estimate 3.4GWh and SEAI 1.7GWh.

But apart from Grid scale batteries what other ones will we have?

Grid scale solar and domestic solar are about equal. There might be a similar relationship between Domestic and grid scale batteries. In 2019 in the UK 10,000 homes had domestic storage batteries. And those batteries seemed to be about 5KWh on average. They have gone up since. that would be 50MWh. This is tiny compared to the amount of grid scale energy at the time. I do not think currently domestic batteries make up a big proportion of total batteries. I could be wrong on this but that is what the data I see at the moment says. 

One place we do have a lot of batteries is in Electric cars. 73000 Electric cars registered in Ireland each with an average 40 kWh battery. Which is a total of just under 3GWh of batteries. That is over 3 times the amount in grid storage systems.

'Under the Climate Action Plan, the Government initially set a target of having 175,000 electric passenger cars on the road by the end of 2025 which would increase to 845,000 by the end of 2030.' That would be 34GWh of batteries in cars. And given that EV battery capacity keep going up, Range doubles every 7 years  that could be nearly doubled by then. Even if they do not go from 40KWh to 80KWh, 60KWh is pretty standard and probably will be average by then.

70GWh of electric batteries driving around involves us meeting our agreements and increased capacity trends continuing. It would be a huge amount of power 16.5GWh grid + 70GWh EV is a big chunk of a days worth of current electricity usage.

There is a problems getting that much energy into cars in 5 years time. If you could get the electricity out for the owner when it was needed it that would really help but that is not currently practical. I can imagine houses filling up EV batteries in cheap renewables and running their house off the EV batteries. Though this is not practical yet renewable and EV trends mean it would be cheap so there is incentive to make it work. Cars are used slightly under an hour a day on average. Which means 23 hours a day the battery could be used to help the grid.

The average house uses about 12KWh a day. Say 20KWh to include heating with electricity not gas. If you have a battery of 80KWh that could hold 3 days of that power and do the usual short Irish commute (17km) a few days a week. There is a big incentive to charge the battery on windy or sunny times and then use the car battery for the house at peak expensive electricity times.

In a few years based on current trends and agreements Ireland could have a huge amount of its daily energy needs storable in battery form. 

Batteries in Ireland 2030

I think the same estimates for Battery power storage in Ireland in 2030 are really too low.

I have talked here about how I think SEAI (Sustainable Energy Authority Of Ireland) estimates for Solar underestimates how much solar we will add to the grid by 2030. 

The SEAI estimate here that we will have 1GW of battery storage in 2030 and optimistically 1.8GW (1.7GWh and optimistically 5.94GWh in total) p87 here 

This estimate comes from p100 of Eirgrid's Ten Year Generation Capacity Statement 2023–2032 

We seem to be nearly at that lower level of GWh already 'Cornwall Insight’s SEM Benchmark Power Curve sees “significant battery storage growth”, projecting that short-medium term lithium-ion battery storage capacity, up to 4h duration, will reach 13.5GWh by 2030, up from 2.7GWh in 2025.'

To take one current planned battery system Ballynahone Energy Storage Co. Donegal 'The company expects the project, which would take 12 months to build, would be capable of storing 1 gigawatt hour (GWh) of energy while future projects will be capable of storing up to 8GWh' That one project could by 2030 surpass the current optimistic estimates

There are domestic batteries, including in cars, which at least reduce peak consumption but could also be used to directly help the grid. If my predictions of close to zero wholesale prices at sunny of windy times by 2030 there will be good incentives for batteries that store power then. and the 13.5GWh estimate could be low. Nevermind the 1.7GWh one of SEAI.


In April 2024 there was 731.5 MW of Battery storage. We added at least 150MW since. Let us say the total now is 880MW. The world has had an annual growth rate of 63.6% in battery storage for the last 10 years (p56 Grid-scale battery energy storage systems). 2023 had an increase of 120.8% so the growth rate seems to be increasing. But if the 63% rate kept going for Ireland's battery storage that would be 43GW. Over 30 times Eirgrid's estimates.

Adding Solar to Wind Farms

 
I talked in 2022 about how I expected Wind farms in Ireland to have solar added to them. The short version is a bad piece of land with a big electricity cable leaving it that is already selling electricity seems idea to put solar on. 

Because solar is during summer days and the wind mostly winter nights the chances of maximum wind and solar being at any one time is small. And when those windy and sunny times do happen the whole grid will have so much electricity that extra watts will not be valuable. Some wind farms are forested but many are pretty bare hillsides.

Solar panels keep getting cheaper. At the moment they are €0.06/W. To take one example Raheenleagh Wind Farm has a capacity 35.2MW which would cost now just over €2 million in panels. 
Panels are about half the costs of solar farms (planning permission permits etc make up a lot of the rest. Stands a 10%ish chunk. With the inverter and other electrical stuff a fairly small percentage 15%ish).

Combined solar and wind farms make sense in Ireland. It means some infrastructure can be reused and a lot of the work that has already been done for an area. For example this planned hybrid site has 'Grid connection via the existing Richfield Wind Farm 38kV substation;'

Ireland's Solar Electricity in 2030

 

Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland have released their National Energy Projections 2024. In this they predict Ireland will have *2.6 more solar electricity generation capacity in 2030. And their optimistic estimate is 3 times more. Ireland has promised to install nearly 4 times more.

It is these peoples jobs to make these projections. and they know far more than I do about electricity generation. But I think they are wrong because of straight line continuing reasons

Below is Ireland's increase in Solar generation since 2017, the first year I can find data for. It increases by more than the 40% annual growth Solar has had world wide for decades

But say we slowed down to this 40% increase rate where would that leave us in 2030? We would have 10 times more solar than now. Not the 3 times SEAI predicts on the optimistic path.

Lots of things could interrupt Ireland's trend but
1. there are lots of planning applications for new solar farms. ' If all were developed, it would add a further 9.5 GW in solar energy to the grid,

surpassing our 2030 target of 8 GW'

2. We have promised to install 8GW of capacity so planning hold ups seem less likely

3. Prices keep dropping, and production keeps increasing. Solar installs in general keep surpassing expectations.

I think the SEAI solar predictions are too low and we are going to have over 10GW of solar installed by 2030. Instead of 2030 to have 5.7GW I think that will be 2 years time, by the end of 2026.