“We are the champions” – Ireland hits 65% SNSP

On 13 April, Eirgrid announced that it was now able to handle 65% variable (non-synchronous) renewable generation on the system at any given time. Eirgrid said in its statement that the island of Ireland’s power system is the first in the world to be able to accommodate this level of non-synchronous penetration. While some countries have already been able to operate on 100% renewables, this has almost always been supported by some form of synchronous renewable generation.

This announcement marked the notable progress that has been made towards the cornerstone objective of the Delivering a Secure, Sustainable Electricity (DS3) programme, of increasing System Non-Synchronous Penetration (SNSP) to 75% by 2020. Eirgrid defines SNSP as a “real-time measure of the percentage of a generation that comes from non-synchronous sources, such as wind and HVDC interconnector imports, relative to the system demand.”

Following this milestone, in this week’s blog, we review the progress that has so far been made towards this target.

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Low carbon generation
James Cunningham

James Cunningham

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