Ireland: the live status of the all-island electricity system
The island of Ireland runs a single, synchronous grid spanning both jurisdictions - the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - balanced together as the Single Electricity Market (SEM) by EirGrid and SONI. It's one of the windiest grids in Europe and has to manage that without the cushioning of a large synchronous neighbour.
- Data as of
- Loading live data…
- SEM price
- €92.30/MWh
- Emissions
- 178g/kWh
- Demand
- 4.83GW
- Generation
- 4.61GW
- GB interconnect
- 0.22GW
Each figure shows its trend over the last 3 hours. SEM price and the generation-mix breakdown below stay on illustrative figures for now - see data sources.
Generation mix right now
Illustrative figures - see data sources.
| Source | GW | % |
|---|---|---|
| Renewables | 2.48 | 53.8 |
| Wind | 2.11 | 45.8 |
| Solar | 0.28 | 6.1 |
| Hydro | 0.09 | 2.0 |
| Fossil fuels | 1.84 | 39.9 |
| Gas | 1.78 | 38.6 |
| Oil / distillate peakers | 0.06 | 1.3 |
| Other & storage | 0.07 | 1.5 |
| Battery storage | 0.07 | 1.5 |
| GB interconnect | 0.22 | 4.8 |
| Moyle (to Scotland) | 0.05 | 1.1 |
| EWIC (to Wales) | 0.17 | 3.7 |
Generation 4.61GW plus 0.22GW imported, meeting 4.83GW of demand. Peat-fired stations closed in 2020, and Moneypoint's coal units now run only as an emergency backup.
Generation by source right now, ranked highest to lowest.
Generation mix over the last 24 hours
Wind so often dominates Ireland's mix that gas output usually moves in the opposite direction, hour by hour. From the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform.
History
Choose a time range to see how demand, generation, price, emissions and interconnection have changed - every measure, side by side.
Demand
Generation
SEM price per MWh
Emissions per kWh
GB interconnect
About the all-island system
Ireland and Northern Ireland share a single synchronous electricity system, kept in step at 50Hz across the border since before partition. Since 2018 the two jurisdictions have traded through the Integrated Single Electricity Market (I-SEM), aligned with EU-wide market coupling.
Because the island is a relatively small, isolated synchronous area with no large neighbouring grid to lean on, EirGrid manages a constraint unique among Europe's major systems: System Non-Synchronous Penetration (SNSP), the instantaneous share of demand that can be met by wind, solar and interconnectors (all "non-synchronous" sources) without risking system stability. That limit has been raised in stages from 50% a decade ago to 75%, then 80%, as grid operators have added synchronous condensers and faster reserves to keep the system stable at high wind penetration.
Ireland closed its last peat-fired power stations in 2020, well ahead of most of Europe's coal phase-out, and Moneypoint - once the country's largest fossil fuel plant - has been retained only for emergency winter backup while it's redeveloped as a green energy hub.
Records
- Highest wind generation (Republic of Ireland)3,898MW - 14 February 2026
- Current SNSP operating limit75% - rising toward a 95% target
- Last peat-fired generation2020
- Republic of Ireland peak demand record6,024MW - 8 January 2025
The SNSP limit - the ceiling on wind, solar and interconnector share at any instant - raised in stages as the grid has been reinforced, with a 95% target still ahead.
Source: EirGrid Group, EirGrid/Irish Times, April 2026 and SEMO. Last checked: 23 August 2026.
Data sources for Ireland
The Elexon Insights Solution, NESO Data Portal and Carbon Intensity API that power the Great Britain pages only cover the GB transmission system, so they can't be reused here. This page instead draws on:
- EirGrid Group's Smart Grid Dashboard - live and wired up above for demand, total generation, wind generation, GB interconnection and carbon intensity across the island of Ireland.
- SONI - EirGrid's Northern Ireland transmission system operator counterpart, covered within the same all-island figures.
- SEMO (Single Electricity Market Operator) - publishes wholesale day-ahead and intraday market pricing for the island of Ireland. SEMO itself isn't wired up here, but the same day-ahead price is also published via ENTSO-E below, so the SEM price stat above is now live through that route instead.
- ENTSO-E Transparency Platform - the pan-European grid data hub. Powers the SEM price stat, the generation-mix table/donut/bar (by fuel type, not by individual power station), the 24-hour mix chart and the History section's price panel above, via its Ireland (SEM) bidding zone. Requires the site operator's own free API token - shows "not available"/"not enough recorded history yet" rather than a placeholder figure if one isn't set or ingestion hasn't run yet.
ENTSO-E's generation-per-type figures don't break interconnector flows down individually (Moyle vs. EWIC vs. Greenlink) the way EirGrid's own dashboard would - the mix table below shows GB interconnection as one combined figure, from EirGrid's net interconnection reading rather than ENTSO-E. The 24-hour generation-mix stack further up and the History section's per-range charts aren't wired to ENTSO-E yet and stay illustrative.