In a week that saw more rain than sun, it might seem counterintuitive to suggest that solar energy has caught on with Irish households, but figures from ESB Networks indicate that is indeed the case.
More than 100,000 homes across the State are now feeding electricity back into the national grid from solar arrays installed on their roofs, as well as providing much of their own energy needs. One in five of those have got connected since the start of this year. ESB Networks says it is now processing microgenerator connections at a rate of 750 a week.
Between them, these homes are delivering 400 megawatts of green energy into the network, earning up to 21 cent per kilowatt hour for doing so. It is not an insignificant supply. For comparison, across the State, large-scale solar farms are producing only about twice as much as these domestic users, according to the data.
Separate figures out this week from the ESRI show there is plenty of interest in investing in retrofitting homes to some degree, and in availing of grants that are available to do so from the Sustainable Energy Association of Ireland.
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The figures found that just over a quarter of households were “actively contemplating” work on their homes, with another group of just under 30 per cent open to the idea “as they actively visualise some renovations, [but] they have not taken concrete steps to investigate retrofit options”.
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Just over a fifth say they have already done some work on retrofitting, with only 22.9 per cent dead set against the idea.
Interestingly, the study by John Curtis, Gianluca Grilli and Muireann Lynch found that the amount of work people were prepared to consider doing was affected by the mess and disturbance involved.
The report found that, on average, homeowners were willing to pay €31,000 on a retrofit that leads to a 30 per cent saving in their energy costs. But the greater the potential for disturbance, the less they were willing to spend.
The ESB Networks figures suggest solar might be seen as a less invasive retrofit option than some of the alternatives.
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