IRELAND SET TWO new records for electricity demand during the cold snap.

The end of the current cold snap is well in sight, with a rise in temperatures forecast over the weekend and that last of the Status Orange low temperature and ice warnings ending earlier today.

Levels of demand on the power system reached a record high during a cold spell last November, but this was twice surpassed this week.

A Megawatt (MW) is the standard term of measurement for bulk electricity and at 5.53pm on Tuesday 7 January, a demand peak of 5,716 Megawatts was recorded.

Just over a day later, this record was bested, with 6,024 MW recorded at 5.47pm on Wednesday, 8 January.

The record set on Wednesday was of particular significance as it was the first time that peak electricity demand passed the 6,000 MW mark.

Demand first passed the 5,000 MW mark during the extreme cold snap of December 2010, a record which stood for a decade before being surpassed in December 2020 and on a number of subsequent occasions, including twice this week.

When the record was broken on Wednesday, around 60% of electricity generation was coming from gas and 17% from renewables.

Meanwhile, the beginning of the cold snap last weekend also saw new demand peaks set for a Saturday (5287 MW on 4 January) and for a Sunday (5,134 MW on 5 January).

EirGrid, which operates the electricity grid in Ireland, noted that electricity demand in the winter is heavily influenced by weather conditions.

Its analysis of Ireland’s peak demand over winter indicates that a 1°C decrease in outside temperature results in a 40 MW increase in peak demand.

Diarmaid Gillespie, Director of System Operations at EirGrid, remarked that Control Centre staff were able to rely on a mix of generation options over the course of the week to ensure demand was met.

“Since seeing the demand peak from the winter of 2010 passed in late 2020, we’ve seen a series of new demand records being set over the last four years, with peak demand rising by almost 900 MW in this space of time,” said Gillespie.