Ireland ‘wasting a lot of energy’ due to lack of wind storage batteries

The country only has capacity to store enough electricity to power 70,000 homes at peak demand for an hour, and the electricity can be held for just 30 minutes

More storage capacity for renewable energy is key to meeting environmental targets and avoiding power shortages, according to an industry spokesman. Picture: Getty

Ireland is wasting wind electricity due to a lack of energy storage facilities, an industry representative has said.

Only “very small amounts” of unused wind electricity are being stored and so Ireland is “wasting a lot of that energy,” Bobby Smith, a spokesman for Energy Storage Ireland, said.

As Ireland faces into a winter of electricity system alerts and possible blackouts due to the power demands from a growing number of data centres and the ...