DUP man Sammy Wilson: Time has come to take back control of Northern Irish energy body from Dublin

It is time for the outfit which pulls the levers of Northern Ireland’s electricity grid to “re-establish its independence” from Dublin control.

That’s the view of DUP MP Sammy Wilson just as a new report is published into the extent to which the Province’s power system is in the hands of EirGrid, the Republic’s state-owned energy firm.

It comes from the NI Utility Regulator – the watchdog which keeps tabs on the gas, water and power systems.

In short, the report says that the Belfast-based body SONI – which handles the day-to-day management of electrical flows in Northern Ireland – is too heavily-dominated by Dublin-centric management.

SONI (standing for System Operator NI) was taken over by Irish state firm EirGrid in 2009.

Currently, five out of SONI’s six board members also have senior roles at EirGrid.

Meanwhile the pylons, wiring and substations which carry the current are owned NI Electricity – which was bought over by the Irish state company ESB in 2010.

In addition, Coolkeeragh power plant in Londonderry is also now owned by ESB.

All of this means that NI’s physical grid, the body which operates it, and one of NI’s three power plants feeding into it, are all effectively subject to Dublin state control.

And in its hard-hitting report this week, the NI energy watchdog says EirGrid is resistant to its calls for SONI to change.

It “hasn’t engaged constructively with the detail of any of the options developed by [us]” for altering SONI’s management, the watchdog said.

Instead it is “float[ing] the possibility of legal challenge should the Utility Regulator proceed with any changes to their current governance”.

In a sharp swipe at those upholding the status quo, the watchdog says that “[we] do not find their analysis of the impact of governance changes convincing... we consider that ‘do nothing’ is not an option”.

The watchdog wants to alter SONI’s board so that it is largely made up of people who “are not, and were not in the previous five years before appointment, employed by, a director of, or have any other connection or relationship (including family ties) with SONI, EirGrid or any other company in the EirGrid group”.

It adds: “There may be one non-executive director on the SONI Board that does not meet the criteria of being sufficiently independent. But this cannot be an individual that has an executive or management role within EirGrid.”

The watchdog wants to see all of this in place by next January, and has just launched a consultation to see what people make of this plan.

This runs until February 21, at 5pm.

SONI said: “We note the announcement from the Utility Regulator and the proposed modifications to our operating licence, which we are carefully considering.

“As the consultation process is ongoing, we will not be making any further comment at this time.”

‘TIME TO RE-ESTABLISH INDEPENDENCE’:

Sammy Wilson is a former economy and environment minister, whose East Antrim constituency contains two of NI’s three power plants – Kilroot and Ballylumford.

He said: “The way in which we’ve slid into the republic having control of our power grid in NI, the way it was structured around it, was always going to be a danger.”

The 2007 agreement struck by the then-Labour government in London to link up NI and RoI’s grids, creating the Single Electricity Market, “actually is not working in the way it should; it works to NI’s disadvantage,” he added.

“EirGrid is always going to have the interests of the Republic as their priority, which has serious implications for us in NI. If the system is under stress... the emphasis and the priority will be to make sure they don’t have blackouts in the Republic.

“I think that there’s a strong case for saying that SONI should be able to re-establish its independence and not have this control of our distribution system in NI in the hands of what is basically an economic competitor.

“It’d be nonsensical for us to think we can have total independence in energy production. There was sense in being able to draw in supplies from the Republic or the Moyle connector in Scotland.

“So having an integrated power system like that is not a bad thing.

“It’s when you allow the governance of that to be not in your own hands, that’s when it becomes a problem.”

WHO’S WHO IN THE LABYRINTH OF ENERGY POLICY:

Untangling the threads of Northern Ireland’s energy system is fiendishly difficult.

Each component operates independently, with its own board of directors, rather than being controlled by a single organisation.

So who’s who in this cast of players that keeps our lights on?

> SONI handles the day-to-day management of the flow of power through the Province’s electricity grid.

It was taken over by Irish state firm EirGrid in 2009.

SONI does not own NI’s three powerplants, Ballylumford, Kilroot, and Coolkeeragh; they are owned by big international firms (private Czech firm EPH in the case of the first two, and Irish state firm ESB in the case of the latter).

> Meanwhile the pylons, wiring, substations, et cetera, which carry the current, are actually owned by the firm Northern Ireland Electricity. It too was bought over by Irish state company ESB in 2010.

> All of this takes place against the backdrop of something called the Single Electricity Market.

This is a kind of all-island energy pool introduced jointly by the UK and Republic in 2007.

Spanning all 36 Irish counties, this single market means that power flows freely between north and south via interconnectors (with plans to replace the current set-up with a bigger interconnector).

This all-Ireland market is then connected via cables under the Irish Sea, allowing both Northern Ireland and the Republic to obtain power from Great Britain (and vice versa).

> The Single Electricity Market is run by an eight-person committee made up mainly of regulators from both north and south.

This committee’s work is largely based around something called “capacity auctions”.

Basically, this means that the committee will say ‘Northern Ireland needs X megawatts next year’, and will then invite power plant owners to bid to supply this need.

It then picks the best value bids – basically locking in the price of electricity for the next year.

The energy companies which are household names like SSE or Electric Ireland then charge individual customers to connect their homes to the grid: the last step in the chain.

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