{"id":489078,"date":"2026-06-08T14:19:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/489078\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T14:19:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:19:17","slug":"renewables-generate-39-of-irelands-electricity-in-may-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/489078\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewables generate 39% of Ireland\u2019s electricity in May \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Thirty nine per cent of Ireland\u2019s electricity was generated from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/renewable-energy\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/renewable-energy\/\">renewable sources <\/a>last month, up from 33 per cent during the same month last year, provisional data from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/eirgrid\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/eirgrid\/\">EirGrid <\/a>shows.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The operator and developer of Ireland\u2019s electricity grid said May was a \u201csignificant month\u201d for the amount of solar energy on the power system, contributing 7.8 per cent to the overall fuel mix. This compared to 5.7 per cent in April and 6 per cent in May 2025. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">With the sunnier weather, a series of new peaks were set throughout the month with the highest being achieved on May 25th, when a new peak for grid-scale solar was achieved contributing 1,222 megawatts to Ireland\u2019s electricity mix. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ireland reached a new peak of over 1 gigawatt of electricity provided by grid-scale solar power for the first time in April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">At 28 per cent, wind energy made up a significant proportion of the total amount of energy generated across May. Total generation of wind amounted to 784 gigawatt hours (GWh).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Elsewhere in May, gas generation accounted for\u202f41 per cent of all electricity used, while 21 per cent was imported via interconnection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/2026\/06\/02\/eirgrid-revises-40m-offer-to-north-south-line-landowners\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">EirGrid to pay landowners up to \u20ac50,000 per pylon along its north-south powerlineOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The overall electricity system demand\u202fstood at\u202f2,794\u202fGWh in May\u202fcompared to 2,865 GWh\u202fin April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">EirGrid carries out the task of balancing the supply of renewable sources alongside conventional generation sources to ensure that demand can be met. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It said \u201csignificant progress\u201d has been made in integrating renewables on to Ireland\u2019s power system. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cTo date the developments we have made have enabled up to 75 per cent of electricity to be generated from variable renewable sources at any one time and we have a significant work programme under way to increase this to 95 per cent,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWhen there is a significant amount of solar generation on the grid as there was in May, EirGrid is observing days where the demand for electricity is similar in the early afternoon as it is at night.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It said this could largely be explained by embedded solar generation helping to supply demand, including through rooftop panels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">EirGrid director of system operations Diarmaid Gillespie said: \u201cWith solar power making almost 8 per cent of the overall fuel mix, as well as the peak records set during the month of May, we have seen again just how important it has become as a source of renewable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thirty nine per cent of Ireland\u2019s electricity was generated from renewable sources last month, up from 33 per&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27796,61,60,43,3400],"class_list":["post-489078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-eirgrid","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-renewable-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}