Energy infrastructure

Google hey? Thanks.

I already knew the answer.

Antoinolatchtnai didn’t seem to want to answer though.

Who are parkwind? I’ll ask google- thanks dacor:

Behind it, stand two reputed Belgian shareholders driven by sustainable entrepreneurship: the Colruyt Group, a leading retailer and Korys, the investment company of the Colruyt family. Grouped together with other wind energy investment projects under the umbrella of Virya Energy, Parkwind plays a key role in the creation of an holistic green energy strategy.

yeah we’ll get cheap electricity from them lads alright 🙄😂

Unless the wind farm is wholly owned by a semi state company like ESB we won’t get cheap prices- and again ESB build and maintain the biggest infrastructure in the state so they have a good track record in this regard.

Your right- you don’t know😂.

I jest.

Point being a private owned company is driven to deliver for its shareholders first and foremost- customers come second.

Once a private company is in a partnership with a semi state it’s a completely different dynamic to a semi state only.

Also just because they have no technical knowledge doesn’t mean they can’t direct employ contractors to build and then handover the generators (wind turbines) when complete.

Then why didn’t they employ consultants and contractors and go it alone?

ESB would have if they could have. They wouldn’t have partners if they could possibly avoid it.

In practice it wouldn’t work. They have to share the risk with a partner who has the appropriate experience.

Hmmm - probably why Germany is opening more coal mine

Just about everybody. For example.

https://www.gov.ie/en/consultation/b19b1-offshore-wind-phase-two-consultation/

Actually that’s an interesting question.

Isn’t there something banning (banning may be too strong a word- discouraging?) ESB from directly owning any NEW generation (fossil fuel or otherwise) due to EU competition law?

Could be wrong here though.

How soon will people be able to start to appeal against the wind farm construction?

I assume the planning applications will provide the opporunity for people to object, but I dont know when those applications are due to go live.

Building anything is expensive at the moment ,

1 the raw materials cost is high ,

2 Wind is the flavour of the month , offshore even more so , so the turbines and the equipment and crews to install offshore also arent cheap ..

Comparing new wind costs ( or anything else) off of last decades gas prices is a bit daft - past performance is not a guarantee of future performance and all that ..

Interest rates count - massively again for any large project

So does risk , we dont have an established system for permissions / licences for the investigations let alone the permissions to build - that adds huge risk ..

Depth counts hugely - an offshore turbines in 60 meters of water is going to be way way more expensive to install than 1 in 10 or 15 meters - large parts of the north sea are relatively shallow - feic it the dogger bank used to be doggerland ,(a few thiusand years ago i know , but still )

In ESBs case the 95% is owned by the government the other 5% is owned by the staff amongst others.

The profit made by the ESB goes back into network renewal and a dividend to the government which then pays for government services etc. so it’s completely different to private energy companies where profits are consolidated with shareholders looking to pocket the profit.

So here we have the crux of the problem.

On the one hand a wholly ESB backed generation company would not be profit driven like a private owned generation company as it is 95% owned by the government as you are well aware.

On the other hand (great podcast) this falls foul of EU competition laws.

So we will never get cheap electricity from wind due to “competition” meaning shareholders are preferred to consumers.

Was the bid more expensive because it was a part bid with a private company?

ESBs profits are reinvested in the company for the consumers and always have been.

95% of ESB dividends are paid to the government.

All these are differences from private company’s.

An important thing to remember about ESB is that they obtain funding (for say a large windfarm) from the financial markets, not state the coffers.

To access the best rates for this funding, the ESB have to demonstrate solid financial metrics. Not possible if they're operating on a non profit basis.