Our latest All-Island Power Market Outlook to 2030 report provides a taster of the insights from our Q2 All-Island Forward Curve report. Changes to the SEM, GB and European Markets over the last quarter have been incorporated into our models, including delays in commissioning and new capacity plans, to revise our forecast from last quarter.
Prices in Ireland are likely to remain elevated above historical levels for the next five years as high fossil fuel and carbon prices persist. However, increasing renewables deployment, especially onshore and offshore wind, will push power prices back downwards. To meet the 80% renewables generation target in 2030 the ISEM market will primarily rely on wind capacity, and by 2030 onshore and offshore wind make up 43% of installed capacity. In Ireland, high wind speeds and connection to wind-saturated Great Britain will mean winter and summer prices diverge as the effect of higher wind speeds in the winter will outweigh the higher demand for power.
To balance the increasing penetration of renewables more storage and backup thermal plant will be needed. Open Cycle Gas Turbines become more popular as they are cheaper to deploy than more efficient Combined Cycle Turbines at lower load factors, and by 2030 they make up 10% of installed capacity. Lithium-Ion batteries are another crucial technology, built to arbitrage low and high prices cause by variable renewables output and to supply system services they rapidly rise to become 24% of installed capacity by 2030.
