Ireland relies on imports from Britain for around one sixth of its electricity, according to national grid operator EirGrid.
The State company estimates that electricity demand in the Republic could peak at a record 6,100 megawatts (MW) this winter, topping a 6,024MW high hit in January 2025.
Newly connected power plants, temporary generators and electricity imports from Britain will aid the system in meeting this demand with supplies to spare, according to EirGrid’s director of system operations, Diarmaid Gillespie.
The Republic and Northern Ireland now import around 16 per cent of their combined electricity needs from Britain via three power lines running under the Irish Sea, EirGrid confirmed.
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Britain supplied 15.8 per cent of Irish electricity in the 12 months to July and 16.4 per cent in 2025, according to the State company.
The British National Energy System Operator is due to publish figures this week indicating that there is no risk to those imports, Gillespie noted on Monday.
Gillespie was speaking in advance of the publication on Monday of EirGrid’s Winter Outlook, which assesses whether the Republic will have enough electricity to meet its likely needs from November 2nd to April 4th.
Risks that the system will not have enough electricity to meet demand at any point over those five months are at their lowest for several years, the report shows.
The “loss of load expectation”, which measures the probability of there not being enough electricity to meet instantaneous demand, is less than 50 minutes for the entire five months, down from 1.1 hours last winter and 3.6 hours the year before, according to Gillespie.
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That is against a standard of three hours set by the Department of Energy, he pointed out.
“That is very good, it’s very low,” Gillespie said. “The day of the highest peak demand, we have a 1,000 megawatt margin.”
The loss of load figure is an assessment of risk, so there is little likelihood of an actual shortage of electricity supplies, he said.
New gas, wind and solar power plants capable of generating 1,084MW of electricity, enough to serve more than 500,000 customers, have connected to the grid since last winter, while 63MW of batteries have also plugged into the system, EirGrid’s figures show.
That includes 275MW of gas-fired power plants built by Lumcloon Energy in Castlelost, Co Offaly, designed to switch on quickly at times when wind and solar power supplies are low, along with 809MW of renewables.
EirGrid maintains temporary generators in Dublin, Offaly and Kerry, as an emergency backstop.
It called on these twice to back up supplies this summer, the only occasions on which they were deployed for this purpose since the grid company commissioned them in 2023.
Industry overseer, the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities, announced last month that they would remain in place until 2028 and 2029 at the latest.
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Electricity customers will have paid €1.4 billion for the temporary emergency generators once they are all shut down.
Turbines at the old ESB Tarbert power plant have been converted from burning coal to heavy fuel oil and can be called on as a last resort.
EirGrid has not used this option, but has occasionally ordered them to be ready in case they were needed, Gillespie said.
