Energy infrastructure

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118585666#Comment_118585666

The economics are great for the developers and landlords, everyone else carries the cost.... - Why has zero solar parks been built prior to the fat RESS rollout for solar last year??

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118585804#Comment_118585804

Most of these area are environmentally sensitive SAC's - it never ceases to amaze me how apologists for greenwash developers think they should be allowed to arrogantly destroy such areas for their own greedy ends

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589120#Comment_118589120

Well I've shown you the verifiable facts from Eurostat, which can be further delved into at regional and national levels through the relevant statistical and energy agencies.

The facts are that the likes of wind continues to fail on pretty much every front for the needs of a modern grid and economy

Let's see those "facts" you refer to.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589141#Comment_118589141

Spiralling energy costs and amber grid alerts a plenty - unlike you I live in the real world and not some BS brochure produced by the likes of WEI.

PS - look up the current Eurostat figures for energy costs across the EU - you might learn something!!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589145#Comment_118589145

Ah ok, thought you would respond with actual verifiable info that could be reviewed instead of a rant.

Oh well

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589145#Comment_118589145

I prefer 'seven' to 'a plenty'.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40745073.html

EirGrid said that between 2010 and 2019, there were 13 system alerts in Ireland.

"During the previous decade, 2000 to 2009, there were in excess of 500 such alerts, so this is not a new phenomenon," a spokesman said.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589139#Comment_118589139

It's not a pristine wilderness. Floating solar panels provide shelter and nurseries underwater too. It's like the way that offshore wind turbines stop overfishing close by.

And you don't need to cover it all in panels, even if you wanted to meet our entire annual demand for electricity from just solar in just one place.

TBH if were going to get all our power from just one place you could easily add a few wind turbines for lots of extra power at minimal impact (eye spots and fluttering devices on blade training edges and feathering to muffle the noise) and have a barrage split in two to provide storage. All with less impact on the environment than the existing fossil fuel stations in the area.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591152#Comment_118591152

I'm not sure if you even understand the ramifications of a SAC. It doesn't matter if it's pristine wilderness or bog from which turf has been cut 40 years ago and woods planted by your great grandfather in the 1920's, if a branch falls off a tree, you can't even pick it up for firewood without paying for an envirnmental report and and asking Parks and Wildlife for permission.

A SAC meens you wont be putting up panels or turbines - period.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591201#Comment_118591201

And yet there's five ports and a ferry service and fossil fuel power plants already there.

Activities requiring consent of Minister - nothing there about floating stuff that can be floated out again.

And the Minister could agree to the right kind of project. Regardless it still shows how little land would be needed to run the country from solar alone.

RandomViewer

There's seems to be a notion that the minimal daylight in December/January can somehow be stored to provide enough power for the 18 hours of darkness each night,

Markcheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591472#Comment_118591472

Yup - I have these little glass jars which you can catch the sunlight in during the day and then open them up - to let the light out - as and when you need it...

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589131#Comment_118589131

You don't know what you're talking about. Solar PV at utility scale reached grid-parity in 2015 in about 30 countries but these were in countries closer to the equator. But solar PV prices have been declining by an average of 15% a year for the last 15 years which, in the last 2 to 3 years, have made grid-scale solar PV installation in northern Europe price competitive.

When this price tipping point was reached, solar PV has exploded in countries further from the equator, including Ireland.

It's called technology and technological progress. Believe it or not things actually change, somethings get cheaper and some things get more expensive. Stuff that made sense decades ago no longer makes sense and new stuff has come on the scene. It's probably been too difficult for you to follow all these rapid changes. Stuff being mass-produced (like solar PV panels) generally gets cheaper over time.

But arguing is a waste of time. There is no argument any more - solar PV has "won" - everywhere from China to the USA are deploying solar PV as fast as they can. This year in the USA, there will be more new solar PV capacity added than all other forms of generation combined - green or otherwise. Globally it's been growing at a rate of 27% a year for the last decade and since 2019 has become the most popular form of new electricity generation GLOBALLY. Anyone arguing against solar PV probably still believes that film cameras will hold their own against digital.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589139#Comment_118589139

Most? Ireland has 13,000 square km of SAC of which 53% are on land. That's about 8% of the land in the country. No matter what way you stretch things, 8% is not most of anything.

Maybe if you spent a little more time researching the subject before accusing others of arrogance, greed or greenwashing, you'd be taken a bit more seriously.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118585666#Comment_118585666

Said farmer could make far more money by selling off sites for individual houses but thankfully that isn't taken into consideration in settlement policy, I don't see why it should in wider land usage and energy policies. Agriculture creates far more jobs and economic value at all stages from production, processing right through to retail. The benefits are retained within the country and provids real and non-transferable trade surplus benefits (unlie much of the MNCs for example). Solar panels would be bought from abroad so money leaving the country, and sustain limited employment. At a national level, replacing agriculture with PV makes no sense at all, we can get more than enough PV from roofs and on-productive lands (e.g. BNM).

Ireland has very few natural resources but our land and climate give us a huge advantage in agricultural production. It is not good policy to move away from something we have an advantage in in favour of something which we are at a disadvantage in. Solar is a resource in which we are sorely lacking, while we have enormous wind resources. We aren't going to be exporting solar energy either as most of the rest of Europe have more/stronger sun than us so will be doing it more effectively. At least with wind, we can generate far more than we need and there is a real prospect of exporting. Wind turbines also need maintenance, particularly those off-shore, which sustains further employment.

PV farms may be ood for individual landowners, particularly those not ardsed farming it, but is not good for the national economy.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592074#Comment_118592074

This is a straw-man argument. Not all Irish land is productive or anything like it. The crappiest agricultural land can sell for as little as €2,000 an acre. There is NO productive use for land of this type that is even in the ballpark of solar PV generating about €70,000 worth of electricity a year per hectare. And there is PLENTY of crappy agricultural land in Ireland.

Anyone arguing that there isn't land in Ireland for PV cannot have looked at the basic numbers. This is a country which can put aside more than 4 million hectares for grazing or 55% of entire land cover (which generates about 4% of our exports). This is a country with a low population density and with large amounts of unproductive "agricultural" land.

Anyway, thankfully these arguments are moot - we've 1GW of solar licensed and/or under construction - but you're unlikely to notice it as it's going to use all of 0.025% of the land in the country. This "shortage of land" argument against solar PV is bizarre.

omicron

Unfortunately there's a massive overlap between the areas that are non productive land and the areas that don't get sufficient sunshine for efficient use of PV panels at grid scale.

Vast majority of solar planning applications so far are on highly productive farm land on the south and east coasts.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591472#Comment_118591472

If only it were that easy. But there's more wind in winter so there's that.

And we can still use 20% gas until 2030. Using the Kinsale gas field for hydrogen would provide storage for 10% of annual demand.

In 2020 renewables supplied just under 40% of our electricity which is over half the maximum possible 75% unsynchronised.

What's the handiest place to download a lot of historical Eirgrid or EU data in .csv ?

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591281#Comment_118591281

Adding useless industrial junk is not going to improve the already poor status of most of our SACs.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589155#Comment_118589155

The number has increased substantially since then - thats why Eirgrid is desperate to get more new gas plants online

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591866#Comment_118591866

Why did solar collapse in both Spain and the UK at various times in the last 10 years when government supports were removed?? Also none of the above waffle explains why no solar parks were built here prior to them getting their snout into the RESS gravy train last year.

PS: The economic ignorance of such posters shines through again when claiming that something is a "success" just cos investors are piling in. If a government is stupid enough to hand our wads of cash for any old rope, then of course folk will try and cash in, the "Cash for Ash" scandal in NI being a prime example

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591954#Comment_118591954

Please don't misquote me - I was responding to a post about covering lakes and bays with solar panels, I merely pointed out that most of these areas were designated as SACs or SPA's

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592956#Comment_118592956

Recent winters(and historically some of the coldest) have seen long periods of HP conditions so your assumptions are well off in reality

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593330#Comment_118593330

Why did solar collapse in both Spain and the UK at various times in the last 10 years when government supports were removed??

Already answered 4 days ago when you raised the same point

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118576697#Comment_118576697

Spains solar growth collapsed due to the double whammy of removing subsidies AND implementing a punitive tax system for any new solar installations. Literally killed the industry overnight.

Since they fixed that the total PV output has grown by 240% in the period from 2018-2020 going from 4.7GW to 11.5GW.

They also have MASSIVE plans for more solar, on a staggeringly large scale in fact

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593330#Comment_118593330

Cost of solar has dropped 80% over that time which completely changes the economics.

The Cash for Ash scandal also showed that restricting a 900kW turbine to 250kW output produced twice as much power as a turbine of the smaller size.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593339#Comment_118593339

What was longest outage ? Until 2030 we can use gas for 20% of annual demand.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592706#Comment_118592706

I am talking specifically about productive lands and stated as much several times. You going on about the full landmass of the country is the strawman. That is irrelevant, much of it is unsuitable for many different reasons (geographical, already developed, specific designations, etc.). The majority of suitable lands are currently in agricultural use.

Agriculture relies on solar energy to generate output, same as solar PV. Unsurprisingly the most productive PV farm proposals are also on good productivity agricultural lands. Where PV replaces agriculture, there is a reduction in employment and economic value. It is self-evident that it is preferable to retain the high employment, high value use, particularly when we can also generate low carbon energy using that resource we have huge resources; wind.

The only people PV farms benefit are landowners looking for returns with no effort at all. Grand for them but at a national level and looking beyond only energy generation, it is counterproductive. We can get more than enough PV without displacing other uses. I have acknowledged that PV on cut away bogs is a good idea but that is not productive land. Unfortunate that I need to keep pointing this out, lest you again start talking about "crappy agricultural land", as if PV is being proposed on such lands.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592706#Comment_118592706

I own such land, it's worth even less than €2k an acre, but you can't put panels or turbines on it, even though the wind is prodigious.

All of this is avoiding the the stupidity of solar - there is no easy way to store electricity and we need electricity 24/7, not just 15% of the hours in a year when the sun actually shines. The cheapness touted is a lie and a distraction. A lot of those 'cheap' panels are made using slave labour, but hell, they're so cheap we can't resist so we just wont think about that and we'll watch some Olympic prisoners perform tricks instead..

Pumped storage requires geography we don't have, batteries plus solar are far more expensive tha the N word, and hydrogen is pie in the sky that no society is using for grid scale storage and for which the efficiency and cost don't look good.

Solar is the dirt cheap car that will only start on one day each month, when you need to get to work 20 days a month, so you buy a second car thats expensive and reliable for the other 29 days so you can brag to your co workers how incredibly cheap the dud turd was.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593399#Comment_118593399

We will be using gas long after 2030.

Capt'n Midnight

ESB 1GW offshore windfarm. 72 turbines 15km from shore. Down the coast from Aberdeen. More capacity for Scotland whose grid is interconnected with ours.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-60259485 https://esb.ie/tns/press-centre/2020/2020/11/09/esb-joins-red-rock-power-in-72-turbine-inch-cape-joint-venture

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594312#Comment_118594312

Although their grid is interconnected with ours, from my reading of link, the electrons from this offshore venture are destined for the UK market as long as the UK agrees to the contract. It only provides security for our supply insofar as it increases the UK's generation capacity. If we were stuck and they had a bit left over, they might send us some.

I assume that it's due to our own govt's lethargy about enacting the required legislation for offshore that the ESB is forced to look abroad for commercial opportunities? Or would they continue to focus abroad anyway, even if the legislation had been in place?