Eirgrid warns of power outages

Paddygreen

There is gigantic amounts of coal under the hills of west Limerick years that will never be utilised.

Eric Cartman

Paddygreen wrote: »

There is gigantic amounts of coal under the hills of west Limerick years that will never be utilised.

Our own resources like the corrib gas should be used. Energy independence should be irelands medium term goal with exporting energy and becoming the worlds data centre being the long term one

ED E

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Not all nuclear, some gas, some hydro, some interconnector, some wind, but building a 2-4 reactor site in the midlands to supply half our energy needs built and run privately would be ideal

I mean all ways of doing nuclear, not a 100% nuclear generation.

We can't afford the money sink that a nuclear plant is.

A French plant that was meant to cost 3Bn is now over 12Bn. This happens everywhere somebody tries to build one. The Chinese could be the exception here. If they can make a commodity build, build 100x of them and iron out the kinks that would bring them up to our standards then it might become economical.

lalababa

It's mainly the wealthier and more educated that vote for the greens.
This can be seen especially in the Dublin South constituencies.

Thelonious Monk

lalababa wrote: »

It's mainly the wealthier and more educated that vote for the greens.
This can be seen especially in the Dublin South constituencies.

Sure what would the more educated know about anything

CountNjord

At least our grand kids will be able to experience the black outs I remember during the 80's

Visiting my grandmother in Kerry, oh the coal hasn't arrived in Tarbert yet...or Tarbert has an engineering problem...

c.p.w.g.w

suicide_circus wrote: »

Very expensive, the technology is still in its infancy relatively speaking and like wind there is a sweet spot - too much or too few waves impact power production - but yes on paper tidal looks like the answer for ireland long term.

Also using wave technology, may have consequences on the coast...

The Continental Op

I live on the South coast and looking out to sea today you wouldn't be generating a lot of power, its been a flat calm all day.

Bonniedog

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Our own resources like the corrib gas should be used. Energy independence should be irelands medium term goal with exporting energy and becoming the worlds data centre being the long term one

Missed the boat on nuclear. Expense would probably be too vast and also run into EU hassle.

What strikes me is the total muddled headedness.

They've known what was likely to happen up to 2030, and Brexit made it more of an urgency. But they did nothing although in fairness the EU dragging feet on the interconnector to France is not helping. French probably don't want it anyway as they rightly place their own interests first unless donning the EU flag suits them.

Makes no sense to be closing down a sector that supplied 8% of our electricity at a time of great uncertainty just to get a pat on the head from the same people who totally ignore carbon emissions in India and China.

Ireland's contribution to all of this is a fart in a hurricane, but will basically shut down several communities who were based around the peat stations.

Not that the Greens give one fk about anything in "the bog" except their holdiay homes and snails, and maybe letting a few dozen wolves lose. Vegan wolves I'm sure :rolleyes:

Thelonious Monk

So just keep chopping up the bog until it's all gone?

beachhead

Bonniedog wrote: »

Missed the boat on nuclear. Expense would probably be too vast and also run into EU hassle.

What strikes me is the total muddled headedness.

They've known what was likely to happen up to 2030, and Brexit made it more of an urgency. But they did nothing although in fairness the EU dragging feet on the interconnector to France is not helping. French probably don't want it anyway as they rightly place their own interests first unless donning the EU flag suits them.

Makes no sense to be closing down a sector that supplied 8% of our electricity at a time of great uncertainty just to get a pat on the head from the same people who totally ignore carbon emissions in India and China.

Ireland's contribution to all of this is a fart in a hurricane, but will basically shut down several communities who were based around the peat stations.

Not that the Greens give one fk about anything in "the bog" except their holdiay homes and snails, and maybe letting a few dozen wolves lose. Vegan wolves I'm sure :rolleyes:

Very succinct comments.A fart in a hurricane.The green gougers et al should note that.After they finish their avocado toast and aloe vera juice.

ElJeffe

lalababa wrote: »

It's mainly the wealthier and more educated that vote for the greens.
This can be seen especially in the Dublin South constituencies.

Exactly, the same ones who can afford to drop 30k on a new electric car or get the house properly insulated etc..

Most of them don't have to drive 2 hrs from another county for work either and have access to decent public transport.

Thelonious Monk

beachhead wrote: »

Very succinct comments.A fart in a hurricane.The green gougers et al should note that.After they finish their avocado toast and aloe vera juice.

Except it's a global problem and per capita we're far worse than China and India.
It was Fine Gael who signed us up to the Paris agreement, don't know why you're blaming the Greens.

Wanderer78

Royal Legend wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/1211/1183760-eirgrid-warning-outages/

So we are shutting two Peat Power Stations in the next week, Brexit is looming and lo and behold now Eirgrid are projecting that power outages may happen if there is not enough wind to drive the turbines.
Am I missing something here in regards to the future planning of electricity demand in our country, now that we have Electric Post office vans and Electric Bin trucks to come, how exactly are we going to cope?

nope, you re not missing anything, we obviously need to crack on with building a modern network for our future power needs, pretty simply really

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

I am so sick of hearing that argument.

The IT department of the company I work for is about 700 people. They don't all actually work in the data centre, but if the DC didn't exist neither would their jobs. I'm sat at home in Galway but working on a system thats whirring away in the data centre.

The point is whether or not the data centre has to be in Ireland for those jobs to exist. Would a 10ms extra ping to France mean those jobs weren't viable all of a sudden?

As for nuclear, I used to think it was the obvious choice but the numbers simple don't work. And I find it hilarious that anyone claiming to be conservative or libertarian could ever support it.

Let's take Hinkley C as our example. Let's be incredibly generous and assume that despite our higher wages and our need to develop an entire national industry to develop a site that it would cost the same here as it will cost the Brits.

It's being built privately and the UK government agreed a floor price for the electricity generated of 9.2p per unit, linked to inflation. Not energy prices, CPI.
In October 2013 the estimated cost to the state to cover this was £6.1billion. By July 2016 the estimate rose to £29.7billion. In July 2017 it was £50billion. It's probably higher now.

Let's take a look at that £50 billion figure. Again, being generous, let's call it roughly €50 billion. There are 2 million houses in Ireland. So that's €25,000 per house. Average usage in Ireland is around 80 units per week. At current retail prices you could buy batteries for every house in Ireland to store a full week's worth of electricity. Just in case the wind doesn't blow (and it's cloudy) for an entire week.

So even being extremely generous on cost, and ignoring the downside of putting a massive proportion of our generating capacity in one place, in economic terms it would be cheaper to let every house in the country be able to store a week's worth of electricity which would be pretty handy to do in terms of excess generation when the wind does blow.

Nuclear just makes zero economic sense. A couple of the newer gas-burning turbines to tide us over for a decade or two til we sort storage a bit better would be the sensible way to do it.

Wanderer78

Deleted User wrote: »

As for nuclear, I used to think it was the obvious choice but the numbers simple don't work. And I find it hilarious that anyone claiming to be conservative or libertarian could ever support it.

Let's take Hinkley C as our example. Let's be incredibly generous and assume that despite our higher wages and our need to develop an entire national industry to develop a site that it would cost the same here as it will cost the Brits.

It's being built privately and the UK government agreed a floor price for the electricity generated of 9.2p per unit, linked to inflation. Not energy prices, CPI.
In October 2013 the estimated cost to the state to cover this was £6.1billion. By July 2016 the estimate rose to £29.7billion. In July 2017 it was £50billion. It's probably higher now.

Let's take a look at that £50 billion figure. Again, being generous, let's call it roughly €50 billion. There are 2 million houses in Ireland. So that's €25,000 per house. Average usage in Ireland is around 80 units per week. At current retail prices you could buy batteries for every house in Ireland to store a full week's worth of electricity. Just in case the wind doesn't blow (and it's cloudy) for an entire week.

So even being extremely generous on cost, and ignoring the downside of putting a massive proportion of our generating capacity in one place, in economic terms it would be cheaper to let every house in the country be able to store a week's worth of electricity which would be pretty handy to do in terms of excess generation when the wind does blow.

Nuclear just makes zero economic sense. A couple of the newer gas-burning turbines to tide us over for a decade or two til we sort storage a bit better would be the sensible way to do it.

oh ffs! rising public debt is fine, it really really is, provided your economy can regularly service these debts, these debts can be continuously rolled over, this is common practice, and rarely causes significant problems. once again, the states ability to borrow is not like the households ability to borrow, they cannot be simply compared

screamer

we should be using the methane from our farting national herd to power villages where there are large cattle farms. my village for example has more cattle than humans, who are all housed this time of year.
As for green cars and zero emissions what a load of bullsh:t, theres dirty coal or other crap being burnt elsewhere that is producing emissions so that gibsh:tes can drive their virtue signalling vehicles. Maybe we should hook the greens up to a few methane plants, the amount of bullsh:t they sprout would help a lot

Danzy

Eric Cartman wrote: »

We are as long as they arent run by the government. A state run nuclear plant would be a disaster

Who in the private sector would invest in Nuclear.

No one, it's only able to draw in private investors when long term costs are paid for by the State.

Nuclear has a place as a strategic State resource for energy but that's accepting that it is the dearest Energy by far once all is factored in.

Wanderer78

screamer wrote: »

we should be using the methane from our farting national herd to power villages where there are large cattle farms. my village for example has more cattle than humans, who are all housed this time of year.
As for green cars and zero emissions what a load of bullsh:t, theres dirty coal or other crap being burnt elsewhere that is producing emissions so that gibsh:tes can drive their virtue signalling vehicles. Maybe we should hook the greens up to a few methane plants, the amount of bullsh:t they sprout would help a lot

so keeping things the same will resolve the issues by....

screamer

Wanderer78 wrote: »

so keeping things the same will resolve the issues by....

ticking over and functional til they actually cone up with a decent, realistic alternative. what they're doing at the moment is stupid at best and downright reckless at worst

Sonic the Shaghog

One thing I'm curious on is what is the solution to the massive environmental damage to all the lithium and other minerals needed for batteries? It just seems like rearranging deck chairs doesn't it, trading one type of environmental damage for another

Surely to be truly green and make an impact we would have to accept we need to go back to something akin to 1900 living standards?

Wanderer78

screamer wrote: »

ticking over and functional til they actually cone up with a decent, realistic alternative. what they're doing at the moment is stupid at best and downright reckless at worst

how?

Wanderer78

Sonic the Shaghog wrote: »

One thing I'm curious on is what is the solution to the massive environmental damage to all the lithium and other minerals needed for batteries? It just seems like rearranging deck chairs doesn't it, trading one type of environmental damage for another

Surely to be truly green and make an impact we would have to accept we need to go back to something akin to 1900 living standards?

no we dont

The Continental Op

Sonic the Shaghog wrote: »

One thing I'm curious on is what is the solution to the massive environmental damage to all the lithium and other minerals needed for batteries? It just seems like rearranging deck chairs doesn't it, trading one type of environmental damage for another

Surely to be truly green and make an impact we would have to accept we need to go back to something akin to 1900 living standards?

I think the point is that we recycle said lithium rather than sticking it landfill.

Danzy

Sonic the Shaghog wrote: »

One thing I'm curious on is what is the solution to the massive environmental damage to all the lithium and other minerals needed for batteries? It just seems like rearranging deck chairs doesn't it, trading one type of environmental damage for another

Surely to be truly green and make an impact we would have to accept we need to go back to something akin to 1900 living standards?

Better doesn't have to be the enemy of good.

Besides what'll end fossil fuels is that technology is replacing them at a cheaper and more efficient cost and that cost advantage is accelerating.

That's why it's winning the green aspect is secondary in reality.

L1011

Eric Cartman wrote: »

We are as long as they arent run by the government. A state run nuclear plant would be a disaster

The only "private" firms that could tender for it are other governments. EDF, the Chinese equivalent, TVA from the US and so on.

screamer

Wanderer78 wrote: »

how?

dont want to be rude to you, but read the op, government policy making us vulnerable due to knock on impact of power outages. think of the impact of frequent power outages on our country and economy. two wrongs don't make a right in this instance, and for sure, change is needed, but that needs proper planning and implementation, not headless chicken turn it all off reactions....

Thelonious Monk

Well building a society that isnt reliant on private cars might solve the lithium issue

Akrasia

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Our own resources like the corrib gas should be used. Energy independence should be irelands medium term goal with exporting energy and becoming the worlds data centre being the long term one

Utilizing our offshore wind resource is way way more likely to allow us to become net exporters of energy than mining our meager fossil fuel resources

We will need interconnectors to sell that energy, and those same interconnectors will allow us to buy energy on the rare occasions the wind stops blowing

Nuclear power is an absolute money pit and we should not waste our resources on it