Skip to content
Irish Grid

Step 1 · The problem

Níos mó fuinneamh in-athnuaite. Billí níos ísle. Eangach nach gcuireann faic amú.

Ireland is building world-class wind and solar — but when the grid can't absorb it, that clean electricity is simply switched off, and billpayers cover the cost. Over the last year an estimated 1,392 GWh of clean energy was thrown away, at a modelled cost of €57.4M. This site shows the problem, what it costs you, and a practical way to fix it.

Period: Official actual
Loading map…

And this is only the beginning

Ireland's renewable capacity is set to roughly triple by 2040 under published national targets. That's great news — but without somewhere for the surplus to go, the share of clean energy we throw away keeps climbing too:

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.

Next in the story

Who pays for all this switched-off energy? You do — through curtailment and constraint payments that land on every electricity bill.

Curtailment payments →