"Green" policies are destroying this country

machiavellianme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493777#Comment_121493777

No upfront costs? They're selling the transmission infrastructure to Eirgrid so there's definitely upfront costs to us given every electricity customers pays tariffs for use of networks.

Plus it's a 1 sided bet. If the wind blows, they're getting €85 per MWh whether we use it or not.

You can call it ex ante or ex post, we are on the hook.

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493917#Comment_121493917

Which explains why wind industry representatives are so bla-ze about how the country will hand 50+ GW of highly unpredictable and variable power

It’s not their problem, they get paid regardless

Its a problem for consumers and taxpayers however who are being conned because they feel guilty or something

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493491#Comment_121493491

I don’t answer for the government. I am talking about your daft plan, not anybody else’s.

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494427#Comment_121494427

Whats daft about having 5GW of reliable 95% capacity factor cheap green energy

compared to 50+ GW of wind and solar that can go from zero to 50 and back in space of hours with capacity factor of 30% and 10% respectively that costs 10x

Did you figure out yet what physical law according to yourself would prevent electricity generated in a fission reactor from traversing interconnectors like you insisted earlier is the case?? Much to everyone’s amusement

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493560#Comment_121493560

The suitability for a large unit is determined by the trough demand, not the peak.

Finland has major AC interconnection to a massive synchronous continental grid. Ireland by contrast is an island. Finland is not comparable.

Small nuclear units aren’t economic. It needs scale to make it worthwhile. That’s why the schemes in UAE and Poland , which have been described in this thread and elsewhere, are all based on really big reactors.

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494454#Comment_121494454

Eirgrid projections show large increases in demand for electricity inline with government policies to move people to heat pumps and electric cars

But nowhere near 50+ GW in the official government plan that can come on and off at random which you are unable to answer how we gonna handle

InAtFullBack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493909#Comment_121493909

On the heat pumps it depends, it's not always the same answer. The hybrid system works by the heat pump bringing the water up to a certain temp and then if the house needs a bump then the oil boiler kicks in. This will work in less well insulated house and retrofits. But I would always suggest insulate first, even if just replacing oil with oil.

That might be viable when implementing a new system from scratch. Anyone currently on oil is not going to invest in cannibalising their system and bolt on an expensive to run heat pump.

I live outside a major town, my brother lives in the countryside and we both have electric cars. In reality 99% of my driving is A-B every day of the year and this is all within the range of an electric car and then charge at night. He is the same. I have one for years and I think I have used the public system maybe 5 times, he has never used it.

Good for you, it suits your needs personally. For many they don't suit.

I do also admit I have a mate who wants to have a 600km range before he will buy an electric, why? no idea. He does less driving than I do because he lives in a village, kids walk to school etc, but every so often he will go golfing etc and wants the ability to not charge for an entire weekend.

I can see his reasoning, if you're spending hours charging the car you want a big range - not necessarily because you do big mileage round trips on a regular basis - it's because people don't want to be charging every second or third day because it takes hours each time. Its also important to note that the majority of people rely on the second hand market for their cars, buying a second hand EV with a clapped out battery increases the amount of time spent charging for an ever decreasing range. A new diesel in 2013 delivering 65mpg is still delivering 65mpg in 2023.

Sorry but a blanket statement saying anyone outside a city can't use an EV is incorrect. Plenty of people it will work for. You just need to do analysis. I would always recommend people to buy based on hardly ever using the public system. I don't have the time to stand for 30 mins at a charger.

Your last point about standing at a charger, coupled with low range is exactly why people are not excited about EVs and there is a certain sense of dread for people buying second hand cars in the 2030s. Lots of crappy batteries in EVs that no-one will want.

In my case try doing 10-15 trips to schools/sports everyday in a diesel and see the cost balloon compared to an electric. I know because I have a diesel 7 seater because at the moment unless I have close to 100k a 7 seater is not available in electric.

How much is a new 7-seater EV, and if that is unaffordable what range will you get from a second hand EV?

In terms of interchangeable batteries, most companies looked at this, it never made sense. I think only NIO are moving forward with it. The reasons are multiple why they haven't done battery swap, Tesla spent a huge amount of time looking at it and backed away from it. The interconnects etc required to swap a battery is huge, it's not like pulling out a couple fo AA batteries

It should have been mandated by the EU, then the manufacturers all would have had to work together to come up with a standard that works. Service stations would become points of battery exchange.

In terms of the market I think we would be a lot better with a mix of fuels, electric/diesel/hybrid. No reason now to have straight petrols anymore. People pick what fuel is best. The false information been fired around about electrics is incredible, mostly because people don't understand the technology. We should also stop all incentives and push that money into public transport. I don't see why the plan is to swap 1 m combustion cars with 1 m electric cars, its ridculous. We need to reduce cars, not swap them

Who really wants to use public transport? You alluded above to not wanting to be standing around for 30 minutes waiting on an EV to charge, would you wait at a bus stop for 30 minutes in the pissin rain?

The people in houses that have prolonged electrical outage are few and far between. So cater for them on a one by one scenario. Oil heating is only planned to be phased out for new builds in 2025, no timeline for existing so you can still cater no problem for older house but even oil with no electricity doesn't work.

Solid fuel requires no electricity. If you go for a full retrofit, that's your stove gone.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493218#Comment_121493218

Its really quite simple

Australia is closing down fossil fuels, it wants to supply all of it's baseload power using renewables plus storage, and is already starting to use batteries to cover peak demand thereby making the fossil fuel plants less and less economical to operate.

This is what is already happening. You can point to some news stories where companies complain about increasing costs or a few projects getting cancelled or delayed as financing falls through, but that is all noise. Plenty of new projects are getting financed and plenty of investment is still flowing into renewable energy and storage, much more than what is flowing into fossil fuel generators or Nuclear. The signal is clear. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, and renewables with storage are already getting cheaper, with the costs of battery storage still rapidly falling as the industry matures.

The biggest barrier is political interference from the coal industry, but even then they're not able to resist the competition from free marginal cost of electricity

https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-has-enough-renewables-to-reach-100pct-at-times-but-coal-gets-in-the-way/#:~:text=It%20said%20at%20the%20time,these%20instants%20are%20already%20occurring.

You can throw out big numbers like '20bn' to 'rewire the nation' or the cost of modernising infrastructure. Big numbers sound impressive and scary, but the numbers are big regardless of what road we take. The grid needs to be maintained and upgraded all the time. Any money spent on maintaining the old fossil fuel infrastructure is considered current expenditure and is baked into the system, while any investment in new infrastructure is thrown out as if it's going to bankrupt the country

Clo-Clo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494489#Comment_121494489

Majority of people will plug in at night and charge so its full in the morning. As I said it will suit lots of people and others it won't. You don't need to charge every second or third days, just top up all the time. Yes it does take hours but that's the point, you are asleep. How many "clapped out batteries" are around? Mot cars are sitting for 8+ hours every night outside a house. Just charge then. The issue is people in apartments etc but if they have parking spots some companie shave options.

A new diesel will not deliver the same MPG today and then in 10 years time. Top gear does loads of episodes on this. The performance and fuel economy drops with mileage and age.

Car manufacturers are using the same types of batteries, its the interconnects. Plus the weight etc. Also by the time you would think about swapping a battery you would have it charged at a fast charger. So that makes no sense?

Most forward thinking European countries have a public transport system which reduces the requirements for a car. That should be the aim.

So in these houses with no electricity they have a solid fuel stove, why not just keep that with a heat pump as a backup? either way the heating is not working without a seperate heating system. Again this is a tiny percentage and can certainly be catered for. Personally I find in all of these discussion people will find the tiny percentage that it won't work for and concentrate on that while forgetting about the majority who it will work for.

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494523#Comment_121494523

Your own post earlier showed that Australia will continue to burn more coal than Ireland well past 2050 rendering all our cow culling efforts moot (hahahaha pun 😂)

Needless to say that’s a lot of time for governments to come and go and so uturns

Australia unlike us also extracts gas

Clo-Clo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494489#Comment_121494489

On the hybrid system, its an oil boiler with a heat pump, why it is "cannibalising their system"? Have you seen them and understand the concept?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493508#Comment_121493508

Scotland has been producing more power than it needs from renewables since 2016 and if they are ever allowed independence from the UK, they'll be able to sell a third of their electricity generation to England and Wales for a nice tidy income

Ireland can export our surplus electricity via interconnectors, and/or by creating Ammonia from hydrogen, which can be used either as a fuel for emergency backup, or exported as a raw material for fertilisers, which will be increasingly valuable as oil and gas exploration winds down

People think I'm making this up, but this is what the experts and industry leaders are talking about internally in their own conferences and in their long term strategic plans for the future of Ireland's energy sector

https://www.energyireland.ie/renewable-gas-irelands-energy-future/

Ireland being able to produce surplus ammonia from low cost electricity generated offshore using abundant wind resources will be a massive opportunity to develop a sustainable industry in Ireland that will help the world transition away from our addiction to fossil fuels

Of course, for some mad reason, the fossil fuel industry don't want us to do that. I can't think why. But they are spending an awful lot of money on trying to convince others to oppose renewables

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493560#Comment_121493560

Why do you insist on simply plucking numbers out of thin air?

How on earth does a 14gw peak demand require 70gb of installed offshore capacity?

That's ludicrous

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493888#Comment_121493888

The cost of maintaining Offshore wind works out at about 30% of the cost of the energy when averaged out over the life cycle of the turbine

But this is all mostly fixed costs. The turbines are maintained according to pre-defined schedules, with some allocations for emergency repairs (which will also be an insured risk)

The fact that the operational costs and capital costs are mostly fixed, means the Marginal cost of electricity for these turbines is very low

So the way to maximise revenue from them, is to produce as much energy as possible as much of the time as possible

This is different to fossil fuel plants where the cost of fuel and much of the operational costs are dependent on how long the plants actually operate, and when these costs are greater than marginal price of electricity, then the operator is better off shutting down the plant and sucking up the fixed costs of having those plant lying idle.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0029801823014178

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494711#Comment_121494711

Right, typical, ignore the evidence from the offshore industry itself showing operating costs that are equal to capital costs and just post nonsense that tries to deflect from the evidence

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494427#Comment_121494427

Your point is rendered moot as the government plant is 10x worse

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494546#Comment_121494546

That graph was just the schedule decommissioning of coal plants.

I'm 95% certain that those last few coal plants will be shut down long before 2050

They are white elephants, the newer plants were mostly constructed because of political corruption

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/former-nsw-labor-minister-ian-macdonald-jailed-for-up-to-10-years-over-doyles-creek-coal-deal-20170601-gwhyp5.html

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/eddie-obeid-and-son-moses-charged-over-30-million-coal-deal-20160706-gpzycv.html

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/institutional-corruption-is-keeping-the-coal-fires-burning%2C13220

But their time is numbered, they won't be able to compete with the economic reality and eventually Australian tax payers will get sick of subsidising them and they'll be shut down

ginger22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494588#Comment_121494588

What makes you think this offshore wind generated electricity will be "low cost". The on shore wind energy insn't so will offshore be different.

patnor1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491623#Comment_121491623

You may be confused a bit here.

Rare earth metals are used quite extensively in what you think we need. From gallium and indium in PV cells, neodymium in wind turbine magnets...

This transition push is pushing prices up and while these metals are abundant they are so dispersed that mining them is complicated, expensive and damaging for environment.

Just for illustration -

A 3MW direct drive turbine contains close to 2 tons of rare earth permanent magnets. Neodymium, dysprosium, and praseodymium magnets are also used in electric vehicle (EV) motors, each EV containing around 1-2kg of magnets. Demand for rare earths is expected to rise sharply in the coming years in response to the growth in wind turbine installations and electric vehicle adoption.

Based on the sustainable development scenario from the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand for neodymium alone in low-carbon power generation and EVs could climb by more than 600% from 4,900 tons in 2020 to 37,700 tons in 2040. Its share in clean energy technologies would rise from 16% to 41% over that period.

https://ratedpower.com/blog/rare-metals-photovoltaic/

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494847#Comment_121494847

Onshore wind energy is low cost. It's much cheaper than energy generated using Gas and Oil

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494769#Comment_121494769

Ok, Now I know you're a liar. From the link that you claim I ignored

18.9%+ 9.3% + 1.8% for decommissioning = 30%

Exactly the number I used

It is not 'equal to the capital costs'

And even if they were 'equal to capital costs' it doesn't even matter to my point, which is the costs are fixed, and not coupled to how much energy is produced, so the marginal cost of energy is very very low

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494777#Comment_121494777

I think this means you accept your plan is silly.

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121495365#Comment_121495365

My plans has clear costs and clear examples around world

your plan has insane costs and no examples from anywhere in world of working

but do go on and tell us again like you done earlier how nuclear fission derived electricity is not capable of traversing an interconnector, I found that really funny

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121495403#Comment_121495403

And yet there is precisely zero interest from anyone proposing to build a nuclear power station in Ireland

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121495443#Comment_121495443

Because those interested are busy lining their pockets at expense of Irish taxpayers and consumers who have one of the most expensive electric prices in world which are only going up as more wind is added

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121495403#Comment_121495403

No it doesn’t. It is a work of pure fantasy, and that is being kind.

I don’t have any ‘plan’. You have this daft plan.

You do not know the difference between a large synchronous AC interconnection and a DC interconnector. You think this is something to be proud of, but it is not.

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121495459#Comment_121495459

Those promising a fairy castle all nuclear future are busy lining their pockets selling us gas and oil whilst we wait for these nuclear plants to be invented, which will not happen until sometime between 2043 and never.

duck.duck.go

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121495942#Comment_121495942

Look poster asked me for price of nuclear, I provided it

I asked for price of the government plan … thumbleweeds

You insist that Ireland can’t handle 4x 1100MW reactors yet when I ask you then how the hell will we manage the planned 50+ GW of highly variable and unreliable and unpredictability renewables and … thumbleweeds

By this stage it’s obvious you are neither able to defend the daft government plan nor have offered alternatives of your own or any costs to prove me wrong just snide remarks completely devoid of facts and figures

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121496286#Comment_121496286

I provided detailed information to show why Finland’s electricity grid is not at all like Ireland’s and that your comparison is obviously false. I also inquired how come Korea has not embraced this model. After your response there was no point in wasting further time interrogating your wild notions.

machiavellianme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494454#Comment_121494454

I worked at Fingrid for a while. I'm unaware of this magical "massive" AC interconnection you speak of. There's a small amount of AC interconnection with the Nordic region (Sweden) and some HVDC interconnection with the Baltics but Finland is not directly connected via AC to the CE system. It was connected mostly to Russia but that's no more.