Overview

Northern Ireland has an ambitious target in place to have 40% of electricity consumed from renewable sources by 2020. To enable the achievement of the target there are around 31 wind farms totalling 552MW of large-scale generation and 250 small-scale generators totalling 65MW of electricity already connected. To achieve the target of 40% will require around 1,600MW of renewable capacity to be connected. There are currently 42 large-scale schemes in the pipeline at various stages of development. The current level of applications for small-scale renewables connections is extremely high. The high penetration of renewable electricity has already resulted in the distribution network having become saturated in some areas. As a result of grid congestion in some areas, connection costs are two to three times higher now than they were in 2012. Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) accepts that, due to congestion on the grid, costs of grid connection in Northern Ireland are considerably higher than in Great Britain or the Republic of Ireland. The high number of applications for grid connections is also resulting in long delays for many developers. NIE concedes that there was a dip in service but states that increased staffing has resulted in significant improvements since last year.

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