Renewable energy is an important part of Ireland’s climate change strategy because it helps achieve sustainability goals, promotes cost-competitiveness, and contributes to security. The latest effort to promote renewable energy is the collaboration between tech giant Microsoft and the country’s largest green energy supplier, SSE Airtricity. Both entities aim to bring solar panels to Irish schools, demonstrating how sustainable energy can be increased in the country one rooftop at a time.
The Model
Conventionally, suppliers purchase energy from central power plants and industrial-scale renewable energy farms. They, in turn, sell it to clients on the distribution grid. Today, energy providers like SSE Airtricity offer renewable energy solutions, enabling end consumers to produce sustainable power using the available grid connections on their premises.
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As the prices of solar panels tumble, it is possible to produce renewable electricity at an affordable cost. Under the project, solar panel installers will fit inter-connected rooftop panels at 27 primary and secondary schools in the nation, promoting sustainable practices on and off school premises. Microsoft, together with SSE Airtricity, will install and manage the solar panels, which are connected to Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform using Azure Internet of Things (IoT). Real-time data on energy created by the solar panels will be aggregated and analysed, allowing Microsoft and other institutions to attain sustainability goals and reduce the carbon emissions of the electric power grid.
Good For The Planet
According to Conor Kelly, a software engineer at Microsoft and leader of the solar energy project for Azure IoT, “We need to decarbonize the global economy to avoid catastrophic climate change. The first thing we can do, and the easiest thing we can do, is focus on electricity.” Microsoft is committed to offsetting the carbon footprint generated by its data centre. With its $1.1 million contribution to the project, the corporation builds on its ongoing investment in renewable energy technologies.
Furthermore, the partnership demonstrates the viability of installing rooftop solar panels distributed across towns, using the existing grid connections and use the IoT to aggregate energy production data and offset carbon footprints. It also shows the leverage of IoT tech in efficiently, performing a range of services from energy transactions to carbon offset accounting. Says Fergal Ahern of SSE Airtricity, “Instead of having utility scale solar farms located outside of cities, you could have a solar farm at the distribution level, spread across a number of locations.” The panels are projected to generate electricity that can power the equivalent of 68 Irish homes for a year and decrease over 2.1 million kilograms of carbon emissions in a span of 15 years.
The alliance is a win-win situation. Schools produce their own energy, which lowers their utility bills. On the other side, Microsoft gets the renewable energy credits, which it can apply to its carbon neutrality commitments.
