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.