Community Energy Federation of Ireland

The Community Energy Federation of Ireland (CEFOI) recognises the potential for 100% community-owned renewables-based microgrids, and the benefits this can bring to communities. However, this potential will only be realised if “private wire” legislation provides a supportive framework for this.  The Government has released a Private Wire Bill, but it falls short in several ways:

• it does not provide a specific supportive framework to support community energy or community owned microgrids
• it risks grid infrastructure, which is a public good and a natural monopoly, falling into private for-profit hands, and the resulting commercial exploitation of communities and households through profit maximisation
• it does not require microgrids to be renewables-based and does not preclude microgrids being used to expand the reach and capacity of fossil fuel generation

Community-owned renewables-based microgrids have the following potential benefits:

• resilience in the face of extreme weather events and the climate crisis, enabling communities to continue to use their self-generated power during power cuts on the main ESB Networks grid, by switching their microgrid into islanded mode and prioritising the most important energy needs within their community
• energy security at a community level
• empowering communities in the energy transition
• financial savings for households and communities using energy generated on the community microgrid, only drawing from the main grid when needed, and exporting excess energy to the main grid

Benefits for ESB Networks include

• Because the microgrid as a whole balances out supply and demand in the community, using energy storage, the peak demand/supply from the microgrid as a whole to ESB networks is less than the sum of the peaks if each household/business is individually connected.  
• Use of microgrid management platforms, which can manage storage and flexible loads on the microgrid, can allow the microgrid to deliver flexibility to the main grid, according to the needs of the main grid. 
• These reduce the need for grid investment by ESB networks. 

Assessing the draft bill

Private wire legislation could be an enabler of resilient community-owned, renewables-based microgrids, however only if the legislation provides a supportive framework for this.  This Bill in its current form does not provide a specific supportive framework to support community energy.  

The electricity wires which connect households and communities to each other are a key part of national infrastructure, which should remain in public or non-profit hands.  The bill in its current form risks commercial exploitation of communities by private for-profit microgrid owners who create a monopoly of energy distribution in a community, housing estate or apartment block.  We are concerned that the legislation is being designed around the needs of corporations such as data centres, and around fossil fuel generation, and not around the needs of communities.

What is needed instead is robust non-profit accountable governance of the electrical infrastructure serving communities.  We call for ownership of such infrastructure to be in the hands of non-profit community-based entities, local authorities, other public and accountable state bodies, or a combination.

You can read our full response here: CEFOI submission to private wire consultation