Step 1 · The problem
More renewables. Lower bills. A grid that wastes nothing.
Ireland is building world-class wind and solar. But on our windiest, brightest days the grid can't absorb it all — so we switch that clean power off and, in many cases, pay the generators anyway. Over the last year an estimated 1,393 GWh of clean electricity was thrown away, at a modelled cost of €57.5M — a bill that lands on your electricity account.
Whether you care most about cutting household bills, hitting our climate targets, or simply not wasting money and clean energy, this is a problem worth fixing. Here's the scale of it, what it costs, and — across the next two steps — a practical, subsidy-free way to turn the waste into value.
What “curtailment” actually is
Curtailment vs constraint
Both are “dispatch-down” — the grid operator telling clean generators to produce less. Curtailment is system-wide: there is simply more renewable generation than the whole island can safely carry at once. Constraint is local: the wires in one area can't move the power to where it's needed.
Why it costs you money
Stability rules keep a floor of gas plants running, so wind is dialled back first. Many switched-off generators are paid compensation, and the lost clean output is replaced by burning gas — pushing up both wholesale prices and emissions. The cost flows straight through to consumers.
What it costs billpayers
The headline cost is modelled as the compensation and constraint payments made to generators — not a naïve “volume × price.” We keep the wasted volume separate from the compensated cost, because curtailment is often unpaid for newer generators while constraint generally is. Full workings live on the Methodology page.
| Period | Wasted energy | Payments (€) | Cost / household | If mined (€) | Saved / household | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day | 3.4 GWh | €139.7K | €0.07 | €308.7K | €0.15 | est. |
| Week | 14.7 GWh | €606.3K | €0.29 | €1.3M | €0.64 | est. |
| Month | 63.6 GWh | €2.6M | €1.25 | €5.8M | €2.76 | est. |
| 2025 | 1.5 TWh | €47.8M | €22.77 | €136.7M | €65.10 | actual |
| 2024 | 1.31 TWh | €41.5M | €19.77 | €118.9M | €56.64 | actual |
| 2023 | 1.12 TWh | €35.8M | €17.06 | €102.4M | €48.78 | actual |
| 2022 | 989 GWh | €31.5M | €15.02 | €90.1M | €42.92 | actual |
Context: the replacement cost
Separately from the compensation figure, the clean energy lost to dispatch-down has to be replaced — usually by gas. Valued at a reference wholesale price of €95.00/MWh, the 1.5 TWh wasted in 2025 represents roughly €142.5M of energy that had to come from elsewhere — plus the added emissions. This is context, not added to the headline cost.
And this only grows from here
Ireland's renewable capacity is set to roughly triple by 2040 under published national targets. That is exactly what the climate transition needs — but without somewhere for the surplus to go, the share of clean energy we throw away climbs with it:
8.5%
of available wind turned away in 2022
10.7%
turned away in 2023
14.0%
turned away in 2024 — and rising
Wind dispatch-down across the island of Ireland, from EirGrid's annual Constraint & Curtailment reports. Republic-only volumes: 989 → 1,124 → 1,266 GWh.
The uncomfortable maths
New wires, storage and interconnectors will help — but they take a decade to build. Adding more wind onto today's grid means throwing away a bigger share of what we build, which quietly undermines the economics of the very projects we need. The question is what to do with the surplus in the meantime — and whether it can pay for itself.
Everyone across the spectrum can agree on the goal: waste less, pay less, build more clean energy. The disagreement is only about how. The next step is a tool almost nobody expects.
Next in the story
What could possibly soak up this surplus the instant it appears, switch off the moment your home needs it, run anywhere, and cost the taxpayer nothing? To answer that, you first need to understand one network.
The Bitcoin network →