News & insights

The regulator of Ireland’s electricity system has published a series of reports produced by CEPA and its engineering partner GHD as part of its draft determination for the 2021-25 price control review (known as PR5) of electricity network companies.

The PR5 period is on the critical path to meeting Ireland’s ambitious decarbonisation plans, as set out in the government’s Climate Action Plan 2019. These include targets of 70% renewable electricity, 1 million electric vehicles and 600,000 heat pumps by 2030. ESB Networks and EirGrid, as the electricity network licensees, have a key role in enabling the transformation of Ireland’s electricity system into a low carbon and flexible system, and in addressing strategic matters such as improving the security of supply in the Dublin area.

CEPA and GHD advised on a wide range of issues for the PR5 draft determination, these included:

• how best to define, monitor and incentivise the licensees to deliver expected outputs during PR5;
• what are the efficient distribution and transmission costs of the licensees delivering these outputs and their business-as-usual activities;
• how should regulatory allowances account for external cost pressures on the licensees; and
• what is the forecast cost of financing the licensees’ activities.

Commenting about the project Patrick Taylor, CEPA’s director leading the work, said: “Ireland is a country leading the transition to a low-carbon electricity system. Many countries in Europe and elsewhere will be looking to Ireland for lessons on how to develop, operate and finance this transition, and how regulation can be an enabler of this transition. This is what made this such an interesting project for CEPA to work on – drawing on our teams’ expertise of best practice regulation while thinking creatively about the specific issues that are relevant to Ireland”.