Community Energy Federation of Ireland

A review is underway of the Electricity Capacity Mechanism, which funds infrastructure which provides power when wind/solar is scarce. CEFOI is calling for targeted supports for community owned energy storage, such as community batteries.

We also argue that the capacity mechanism should not support fossil fuel infrastructure.

Local community-owned energy storage has multiple benefits including:

• Local economic benefits, channeling capacity mechanism payments to local communities rather than fossil gas plants or large energy users. This will also allow communities to generate revenue through charging/discharging in line with time of use tariffs, particularly after energy sharing is introduced.
• Support for local grids: Community batteries can support the grid and ESB networks / NIE networks in the context of local grid constraints, and reduce the scale of grid upgrades needed for the energy transition.
• Local buy-in to the energy transition
• Increased awareness in households and communities of energy issues through knowledge and awareness of when their community battery is charging and discharging, and when renewables are plentiful or scarce.
• Local resilience: If community owned batteries are paired with “Community support centres” ie a community building which acts a centre in emergency situations, this can provide local power resilience and services to the community during grid disruptions, which will be increasing in frequency due to climate change.

Here you can read our full submission.