More than 760,000 homes, schools, farms and businesses were left without electricity following Storm Éowyn in January. It took about 18 days for connection to be restored in some rural areas. With 19 named weather events experienced since September 2023, according to Met Éireann’s storm centre, how can we make homes more resilient to future outages?
Does it mean that traditional features such as chimneys, for example, will make a return? Will we see new builds with fireplaces added for emergency use or backup generators provided for electricity in the event of a power outage alongside heat pumps and solar panels?
The answer from one large-scale developer is a resounding no. “Property developers have moved away from fireplaces and generators for sustainability reasons. You won’t see these returning,” he says.
The passive house model is one way forward. Niall Crosson, technical director of Ecological Building Systems and the owner of a passive-built home, says he weathered six days without electricity in relative comfort.
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It was a useful test of living in an all-electric certified Passivhaus without any power, he says. “My experience was actually very positive. There were practical challenges with lighting and so on, but from a thermal comfort aspect we were very happy. The temperature within the house barely dropped by one degree, even with the cold at the time, and the few sunny days really ramped up warmth, which the house retained,” he says. This was thanks to its airtight construction.
“Some of our neighbours called in during the power outage and asked what heat source we had. When we said ‘nothing other than the heat the family created just by living here, and whatever few hours of sun the house captured’, they couldn’t believe it,” he says. “At night we all gathered together in our open-plan livingroom and played board games and you could actually feel the room getting a little warmer from the heat given off by the candles.”
For cooking he did what a lot of other households did. “I have a gas hob on my barbecue, which is in a covered outdoor living area, so this was used for cooking and hot water,” he says.
Crosson, whose company sells high-performance building products, including a variety of natural and breathable insulation types, understands construction methods.
It was a really telling experience of how resilient passive house construction can be for people in rural areas and gives credit to the approach of putting the “fabric first”, he says, referring to the practice of prioritising building materials rather than the more superficial fixtures such as decoration.
In case of future emergencies Crosson has no plans to fit a stove or a fire, but may look to have a specific type of electric vehicle charged in advance. He had his own electric car charged last time but learned it would be better if the car were vehicle-to-load compatible as that would run core household appliances for an extended period if needed. “In outages, I think EVs have so much potential to further protect houses,” he says. “It would be great if vehicle-to-home compatibility could be brought into Ireland in the coming years.”
Crosson also has PV solar panels on his roof. He would adapt these to include a closed circuit that allows for the provision of power to the house and possibly a backup battery too, he says. “But as far as battery goes, my car is best for this,” says Crossan.
Automated battery storage is great if money is no object, but expensive to install, says Dr Matt Kennedy, head of client transformation at IDA.
If you’re dealing with already-constructed homes, you enhance the reliability of energy supply by increasing energy independence, bringing on small-scale renewables [such as] PV, he says. “A lot of towns could consider microgeneration, wind turbines or PV, but the intermittency of that really requires batteries to store,” says Kennedy.
He suggests looking at the digital hub model, which has been rolled out across Ireland. “The solution is the same but we’re talking about scale – district solar solutions, something that has more batteries.”
We have to be pragmatic and optimistic, says Prof Karen Wiltshire, chair of climate science at Trinity College Dublin, and a hydrobiologist and expert in coastal research.
During Storm Darragh last December she had first-hand experience of no phone, no internet and no electricity in her home in rural Co Wicklow. She had water because she has her own well.
“We need to supply the country with decent energy. Our original [founding] government went to great lengths to deliver electricity throughout Ireland. We now need climate-resilient electricity for heating and to run medical equipment,” she says.
Having a chimney (or an open flue) will not solve the problem, Prof Wiltshire says. Instead, we should look to towns and villages of the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany where, through government grants, the community has set up huge methane tanks from farming’s excess slurry and manure which deliver gas-fuelled district heating.
“These communities are in some of the most underpopulated parts of the country. There are solar panels on all the roofs. Farmers have them on barns and outbuildings. Free-range chicken farmers use them as shelter for the poultry as well as to generate energy,” she says. They sit atop community buildings and they sell any excess to the grid. “The monies earned are used to reinvest in the systems and upgrade the technologies.” These include thermal heating pumped into schools from a central generator.
And for those individuals who can’t afford to invest in these technologies, there should be a loan offered to buy the relevant equipment, says Wiltshire. “It isn’t any different to people who can’t afford to send their children to university getting help,” she says.
At a time when so many people lost electricity, are there options other than a centralised system?
Under the concept of a private wires system, private entities can generate and distribute their own electricity within a limited area, such as an industrial park, a commercial premises or a private development, Kennedy says.
“ In terms of benefits, the decentralised nature of such private networks or wires provides lower electricity costs for end users and improved energy efficiency as they avoid transmission and distribution charges. Private wires can support local renewable energy generation such as solar or wind for self-consumption, helping businesses reduce costs and emissions,” he says.
Energy security of the entity generating the power, be it a rural community, a new homes development or a business, is preserved. “The entity has greater control, resilience and efficiency in its electricity supply, especially in the face of disruption or blackout across a centralised grid. Private wires enhance energy security by reducing reliance on the centralised grid, allowing businesses and communities to maintain power during grid failures.”
However, Kennedy caveats, it requires a shift in our electricity policy. The Government published principles to guide the formation of its upcoming Private Wires policy. One stated the national grid will remain the primary way to connect generators and consumers.
For communities keen to develop a backup plan there is no use fundraising for such private-wire options unless policy changes, Kennedy says.
As with the grid, he says, safety and security considerations are another factor.
