This means producing amounts of electricity – from an installation up to 50 kilowatt capacity (a kilowatt – kW – is a unit of measurement of power) from renewable sources like solar, wind and hydro, typically for the electricity user’s own use. Producing your own electricity in this way can help to reduce your electricity bills and help the environment.
Examples: Electricity generated from solar panels on our homes.
A well placed, home rooftop solar panel system (about 12 square meters) would produce around 1,680 kilowatt hours of electricity a year (a kilowatt hour is a measure of the energy consumed by power consumption of 1kW during 1 hour). That is 40% of the average yearly electricity demand of an Irish home.
Producing electricity with a 50kW installation would power the daily electricity demands of about 10 average households in Ireland.
You can find out more about microgeneration at https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/b1fbe-micro-generation/