The wondrous adventures of Sinn Fein (part 3) Mod Notes and Threadbanned List in OP

Ah jeez I can't be doin that, then I'd be in real trouble

Yep

Both I reckon, the shirts probably the most dangerous though, the soldiers are aged and increasingly ineffective

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Anyone who expects change with SF is deluded.

Obviously you’re not going to answer the questions, first raised by your idiotic post a few pages ago, so I will answer them for you. But first I will answer the completely deflective question you asked.

Of course the price of electricity has decreased in the last 2 decades, not often but it has, and it has decreased because the price of raw materials has decreased – simple senior infant stuff – hope that answers your question.

Now I’ll answer my own questions for you.

Has market opening given us cheaper electricity – NO, and that should be patently obvious to anybody from first class up. Market Opening alone initially added €600 to every electricity customer’s bill, SEM and ISEM were bigger projects so I’d imagine combined they would have added an extra €1k at least (I don’t know the exact figures so that’s a guesstimate) to every electricity customer’s bill. The ongoing maintenance and support costs are adding millions annually to the cost of electricity.  And all of those costs are before you even turn on the light bulb. Before market Opening we were among the cheapest for electricity in Europe (second or third I think), now we are the fourth most expensive in Europe. Competition has served us well hasn’t it. I’ll continue with the first class for a small bit. We have a finite number of electricity customers and a finite number of KWH being used, Market Opening/SEM/ISEM didn’t create one extra electricity customer or cause one extra KWH to be generated. Do you think it makes economic sense to take one small business with a finite number of customers and product and split it into 20 different businesses all selling the same product to the same finite number of customers, can you see any economic downside to that scenario. Another little poser for you, why do you think that large companies out there in the non-fantasy world acquire/merge with other companies in the same field, can you see any economic rationale for those.

Has it given us guaranteed continuity of supply. Again the answer is patently NO. For the first time in the history of the state we are at risk of power cuts this winter because of a lack of generation capacity, having sailed close to the wind over the last couple of years. We are having to try to buy in short term generation capacity at enormous expense (guess at who’s expense) to try to avoid power cuts – third world stuff.

More unadulterated bull, and what has this to do with SF, PBP or the price of spuds, another abject failure at deflection, but you continue to live in your cloud cuckooland

Edit: electricity has been cheaper - this is repetitive crap that you continue to come out with, electricity has been cheaper on a couple of rare occasions, but only in relation to the price immediately pre the reduction. In the last 20 years electricity has never been cheaper than it was pre 2001 - NEVER

Abe Lincoln: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt

I assume we are discussing this because it is SF policy to shut down data centres? Have they told their young followers they want to switch off Tik-Tok and Instagram?

As you know Blanch, I'm by no means a SF supporter, but the economic benefit of data centres (which require fairly minimal personnel post construction compared with their size and energy consumption) is absolutely on the questionable side of things.

I'm not aware of any Instagram data centre plans for Ireland? And I'd rather we continue to try attract the tech side of both companies' business rather than the infrastructure side. As someone who professes Green leanings, I'm very surprised to find you defending data centres here.

Given the Irish temperate climate, we are one of the best places in the world from a climate change perspective to host data centres. There is a different question around whether they are needed at all (hence the Instagram quote) which is what you might do if you don't put them in the best place.

Attracting just the tech side is not necessarily possible, and the IDA appear to believe that hosting the infrastructure helps create a longer-term presence.

As Instagram is now a Facebook company, surely they are covered by it? This article explains it better than I can.

"We also has a good climate for data centres; it’s not too hot and not too cold, we are geographically and tectonically stable, with no earthquakes, volcanoes or forest fires."

"The other obvious thing is that a lot of the big corporates, the Googles and the Facebooks, already have their headquarters here in Ireland. So by co-locating their data centres here, it keeps them local, keeps them nearby,"

So maybe not good for Ireland's climate emissions, but good for the world's.

No, it wasn't exposed as utter bollocks.

No, it doesn't blow that perfect climate claim nonsense apart, unless you take a simplistic head-in-the-sand parochial approach to things.

We don't and won't have a water supply problem so long as we build the correct infrastructure, very few countries can say that.

As I said, we are possibly the best location in the world for data centres from a sustainability perspective.

Most datacentres are aiming for zero carbon by investing in renewables. One of the big problems in Ireland has been getting the interconnectors built which has lead to datacentres having local (usually diesel) backups rather than being short of energy (so lobby to get pylons built). The water is also re-used and even treated using biological processes as it works through the Datacentre while being constantly re-used to keep usage down.

However, others are right that Ireland is a very efficient location to place them and drives jobs in the companies they are co-located with along with on-site staff (20-30 employees per DC if I remember right).

The datacentres host many of the services that the modern world uses to keep on running (I know anathema on this thread with most longing for the nostalgic 80's for some weird reason). Instagram, ICloud, Android Store, Facebook, whatsapp etc. will all be getting hosted in there.

But shutting down datacentres and re-nationalising energy is more a PBP thing than SF (can't have the proles talking to each other), it's going to be hilarious watching the lefties realise all is not right if SF get into government (and the excuses that will pour out).