Energy infrastructure

The cost of the UK's Dogger Bank wind farm is £2.5b per GW, for 47% capacity factor.

The cost of the UAE's Barakah NPP is £3.6b per GW for 96% capacity factor. Double the cost of Dogger Bank to account for the difference in CF - and that's being exceedingly generous as it should be more like 3x due to the hydrogen inefficiency and the cost of all that infrastructure - and you get wind costing £5b per GW vs nuclear at £3.6b - and that's before considering Barakah having double the life expectancy of DB and the massive O&M costs for offshore wind which run to an additional 30% of the initial capital outlay over it's lifetime.

It's not even close.

The term 'best practice' is a given in industry and for many foreign governments and organisations. It's accepted as they way to do things. It is not accepted practice to follow bad examples, which is what you are calling for. It's an unsound basis for an argument.

The UK nuclear costs are off the rails and they haven't recently finished building a NPP and have legacy issues of mismanagement of the sector. They are belatedly looking to get Koreans involved because they have made such an expensive mess of things. They aren't close to being representative of best practice and they have no recently completed projects

It is blindingly obvious that current best practice in the design and construction of NPPs is Korean built APR 1400 reactors. Multiples of these have been built in Korea, and now the UAE, and soon Poland as well. The UAE and Poland were both able to identify best practice and followed it. It doesn't matter that these have and are being built in three different geographic locations.

If Ireland were to change course and look to build a NPP, it would be insane to suggest worst practice be followed rather than the best practice identified by the UAE and Poland. The UK is closer to Poland than the UAE or Korea. Somehow the Poles and Emiraties realised a NPP isn't the same as housing.

The UK is identical to Ireland in having some of the highest capacity factors and thus most economic wind resources, on the planet, making the comparrison as fair as possible. They also have recently completed projects with known costs, just like Korea and the UAE NPP's

If the UK were building out wind farms using 30% more expensive, less efficient, domestically designed and built turbines, instead of 30% cheaper ones Denmark was making and supplying to multiple countries, you wouldn't be sitting still for any nonsense were I to insist prospective wind farm pricing in Ireland be based on UK costings vs Danish, simply because they were closer.

If Romania were wanting to build a children's hospital, they'd be mad to use Ireland as an example of how to do it, given it's an obvious mess still playing out, with unknown final costs - over looking at a recently completed project that's a known quantity, was better executed and a lot cheaper, like the one recently built in Perth Australia.

Lots of concern around marine wildlife though it seems.

A lot of planning hoops to get through yet

I think the price - €86/MWh - is actually not that bad. It initially seemed very high by the standards set in last year's auction in the UK where it was reportedly settled with a strike of GBP37.35/MWh.

HOWEVER, the UK uses prices index-linked with inflation with a 2012 basis while as far as I know (and up to the last RESS) Irish prices are not indexed linked. So if the UK auction winners were up-and-running today, the Cfd price would already have risen to GBP50/MWh or about €57/MWh.

Still, nominally a whole third cheaper than in Ireland but again this doesn't take into account the cost of the index linking. Rough calculation suggests that if UK inflation averages under 2 and a bit% over the next 15 years, they will have done better - averaged over the period - while anything over 3% average UK inflation would see the cost in Ireland being less.

And delays are inevitable. Trying to build wind farms in Dublin bay is going to be objected into oblivion.

Its barely worth recognising the project as it is very unlikley to happen I expect.

Success would be a lot easier if the farms were in a less population area.

So lets just ignore the issues raised and rubber stamp everything these developers/speculators want(aside from gouging energy consumers)?? A recent paper from Germany has shown offshore windfarms there produce significant displacement issues for a number of seabird species from key feeding sites. Plastering the most biodiverse areas of the Irish Sea with these white elephants will do immense damage to a country already in a biodiversity crisis,.

EU Gas futures have been well under 30 euro /mwh for most of the time over the last decade. This is locking in high electricity prices

Odd that the Arklow bank 2 was unsuccessful. Given so much work has been done in the town on the back of this going ahead. Sse were planning for berths and offices in the harbour and 2 data centres also going into the town. Also surprising they're pushing on with the 2, further up the coast which will surely attract greater objections given their proximity to a greater population density.

Yeah I understand that but just because that’s the status quo is that a good reason not to change anything?

Surely we’d be better off working towards doing it mostly ourselves and having the resultant production capacity entirely state owned?

The govt owns ESB yes but is the ESB not effectively “renting” the turbines built on our land by external entities who sell our own wind energy back to us at a fixed rate?

I know that’s probably an oversimplification but the idea that our wind can be our oil surely stands or falls on the basis of owning it and being able to harness it ourselves?

Lol I know wind energy is not like oil, it’s just an expression I’ve heard

Fair enough on your other points thanks for the explanation

Compared to what? This is the result of a competitive process. All the players put their best foot forward and this is the best pricing they could offer.

It does seem odd that they are looking to put the farms in this location, with all of the wildlife that will be impacted in Dublin Bay.

It is lilkley also to impact fishing capacity in the bay, as species move away due to the construction and disturbance in the sea bed.

I cannot seeing these projects not getting hammered by objections.

And when you consider the electricity pricing isnt looking good either and we have no state control over the farms, there seems to be plenty of good arguments to oppose these projects.