"Green" policies are destroying this country

Nuclear 'can' do load following, but it is pretty bad at it, and it makes the plants less efficient, more expensive to maintain and have a much shorter operating lifespan

If we build enough Nuclear to cover more than baseload, with BESS storing the surplus to use when there is peak demand, it will increase the costs of nuclear significantly. I would suggest that the 'backup generators' would end up being much cheaper to run than keeping the nuclear power plants running at reduced capacity or curtailed, and we'd end up mothballing a bunch of extremely expensive nuclear assets, which would then drive up the LCOE from nuclear to a level that would have meant that we would always have been better off just building renewables from the start and never bothering with the nuclear 'experiment' in the first place

DunkelFlaute that happens over an extended period and over an extended geographical area is a relatively rare event. On average, a 2 day 'dunkelflaute' happens once every 5 years in Europe but they typically happen in shorter bursts of a few hours, or one to 2 days at a time

This is actually perfectly fine if we have the infrastructure to handle it. Which we currently do by using Gas turbines to cover the gap, but we don't want to be burning gas long term, so the plan is to convert those turbines to burn Ammonia instead, and to have a strategic reserve of this fuel available to draw on when we need it.

It is also a mistake to assume that Nuclear does not have to be backed up. France had half of it's nuclear generation capacity go offline at the same time within the past 12 months, and instead of that being a few hours or days of an outage, they were out for weeks and months at a time.

Nuclear still requires backups

By far the biggest operating cost of current generation plant is fuel. Eirgrid, in fairness, do a pretty decent job of balancing the grid so that fuel is only burnt when required. When a fossil plant is offline, it's overall operating costs are relatively low. We've only ever built "just enough" plant to meet our needs so that plant does not largely sit idle and is as utilised as can be.

A renewable grid does nothing to change this. In many ways it makes the fixed costs significantly higher and the idling times even more significantly so.

First, you have to factor in the costs of the energy generation source - wind and solar.

While these have no fuel input costs as such, you need exponentially more generating units spread across a much wider land area than traditional plant. For offshore, the environments are significantly more risky, highly corrosive, and extremely harsh, both for the plant itself and for those working on them and will naturally demand higher skills (i.e. higher wages) and likely require more personell to staff and maintain.

Since they will only be able to generate revenue 30-40% of the time, based on current capacity factors, this means the times they are generating will be priced to cover the periods they are not.

Then, in addition, you need backup plant. These too will have fixed costs which must be covered.

In order to cover extended lulls in renewable energy availability, we will ultimately need backup plant in place to the same capacity and output as our current baseload plant (and then some, to cover added electrification-related growth).

They will still have to "buy" fuel, in the form of hydrogen/ammonia so will have input costs.

However they will be generating only a few hours per year compared to the thousands of hours a year of current traditional plant so have to recoup their costs in a much smaller time period.

They must then price their output sufficiently to cover their fixed and fuel costs for the relatively short times they are generating.

Further, you then need a grid to carry all of this. Traditional electricity grids are built to carry the energy from generators, which are typically located as close to where the demand resides as possible. The highest carrying capacity links in our grid - the 2 x 400kV lines from Tarbert/Moneypoint heading East - are as I understand it in the very low GW. The majority of our generating capacity is located on the East coast where the majority of our demand also sits.

Under present plans, the grid will have to sized up exponentially.

First, to be able to carry peaks of 30GW+ from tens of kilometres out at sea onto land, and then be able to carry the significant bulk of the live demand west to east to where it is needed. A complete reversal of present flows on the grid.

The fixed costs of doing this will be enormous - literally many multiples of what we have today. Those costs will all need to be recouped through setting of appropriate standing and unit rate charges.

How is all of that going to provide cheap electricity as the end result?

How come the above will be a success for renewables with electrification of transport but a failure if they were primarily generating ammonia/hydrogen for transport only?

You know what the offshore plan is so why are you being disingenuous. It is not a plan to use surplus energy to produce hydrogen.

It`s a plan to generate 12GW of electricity from 30GW of offshore wind, 6GW of which for hyrdogen. Consumers will not only pay for the offshore capital cost, plus the operational costs, plus a profit margin for the 6GW earmarked for consumption. They will also pay the same on top for the capital cost, the operational costs, the profit margin plus all the associated costs of hydrogen production (desalinisation plants, storage, distribution etc.) and will still end up paying for this hydrogen again if or when it is used to generate electricity.

Even outside of the fact that Ryan has gauranteed these offshore providers the consumer will pay for all they generate even if we do not need or use it, there is nothing in that plan for hydrogen production from cheap surplus energy. Nothing cheap by any yardstick.

There is another major flaw in that plan in that it is now shot to hell and back. Eirgrid`s prediction is that by 2050 our demand will have doubled. This plan has now been increased from 30GW to 37GW for offshore, but to follow the same plan offshore will need to go to 60GW. There is nothing cheap on that road. It`s a road map to economic suicide.

Eamon is despondent - realises he's running out of road.

In a renewable dominated grid, the cost of the fuel is zero at the point of generation, with costs associated with storage and converting the electricity into a storage medium

Almost all of the running costs are fixed, so whether the wind turbine is generating electricity for 24 hours a day, or for 4 hours a day, the fixed costs are almost the same. Therefore, it makes enormous sense to have the wind turbines generating electricity as much of the time as possible, and then using the surplus energy to charge batteries, pump water, convert water to hydrogen/ammonia etc

This is very different to using fossil fuels, where the biggest cost is the fuel, so there is a break even point where if the price of electricity goes below the cost of the fuel, the power station should stop producing energy

Your point about dispersed grid generators costing too much is misguided. The cost of installing and maintaining these assets are almost all fixed costs.

We already know the LCOE of wind and solar is competitive and despite what some would have us believe, Offshore wind is still one of the fastest growing industries in the world (along with Solar) https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-electricity-growth-is-accelerating-faster-than-ever-worldwide-supporting-the-emergence-of-the-new-global-energy-economy So it makes sense to deploy these assets , and then use them to generate as much electricity as possible whenever there is a wind resource available. The marginal cost of energy from these plants will be extremely difficult for Fossil fuel or even Nuclear to compete with, with Storage working in synergy with renewables to take advantage of the very low costs of energy when there is surplus supply.

A market in energy storage will emerge organically from the supply driven energy market, and the demand based energy generation system will become white elephants as the costs of fuel will mean they'll be shut down most of the time.

The market will adjust, some investors will lose their money, others will survive. What do you want to happen? As consumers, we only care about getting cheap reliable energy, as citizens, we should also care about sustainable energy that won't ruin the planet, so illegal fuel laundering should be severely punished and no doubt it will be if there are commercial operators who are losing money because the state is turning a blind eye to counterfeiting and smuggling

Low or high energy prices are completely relative. Sustainable is much more important.

Fuel is cheap in the US, and cars in America get the worst fuel economy in the developed world.

What we need going forward is stable, reliable energy supplies. For all of the complaining about renewables being 'unreliable' there is very little chance that the wind will invade Ukraine and force us to apply economic sanctions on the wind. It is very unlikely that wind and the sun will form a cartel and fix supply and output to maximise prices...

Decentralising generation and storage and developing a grid that allows anyone to take control of their own energy supply down to the individual end users should be extremely attractive to people of the more 'libertarian' side of the economic debate. Rather than putting all our eggs into the basket of a few conglomorates, and despotic regimes that control limited resources and use that control to blackmail western countries into accepting their human rights abuses

I read that and my head spontaneously started shaking from side to side

It's very likely that wind and solar companies who supply the power will form a cartel and fix supply and output to maximise profits

Most people will choose cheaper energy over any sustainability. Can you blame them?

We 100% need stable and reliable energy supplies, and that should be made up of all sorts of sources, including coal, oil and gas.

Just to add, even if power demand doubles, we're still looking at peak demand of 14gw and average demand closer to 9-10gw, and a lot of that will be additional demand from BEV and Heat Pumps, which can be timed to run outside of the normal peak hours

The grid will be getting more divorced from 'Peak' and 'Baseload' demand as storage and smart meters push users onto cheaper energy at 'off peak' times

So imaginary (currently non existent) offshore wind plants will send electricity through imaginary grid (which needs to be upgraded all over this island because EV's and heat pumps push), then also send surplus to imaginary battery storages, imaginary pumped hydro storages and imaginary hydrogen and ammonia production and storage facilities.

All this imaginary stuff which so far does not exist needs to be built and paid for before all this magic happens. We talk about hundreds of billions here, quite likely a lot of them. The fact that they do not want to talk numbers means they do not have a slight idea themselves. In a world heading into recession it is hard to imagine who will borrow us the funds needed mainly since we are up to our ears in Celtic tiger debt already. We do not have that kind of money and if we try to borrow what will become insane amount quite fast, we end up paying just interest for generations to come. That pretty much guarantee that there will not be cheap energy for anyone for a very very long time.

All that is missing from this nonsense is magic dust and unicorns.

The 37gw is for installed capacity. Ireland's actual electricity demand will be much less than that.

Ireland's current electricity demand is peak 7gw. Our overall energy demand is higher because of transport and heating, but both transport and heating are much more efficient when powered by electricity (if using heat pumps, 4 times more efficient than a domestic gas burner and electric cars having a 'MPGe' of well over 110, while the average MPG of ICE cars is closer to 40mpg

If we can ultimately get almost all of our heat and transport electrified, we'll be able to save a huge amount just in the efficiency improvements from using heat pumps instead of thermal generation and BEVs instead of ICE.

And what about the people who cant take advantage of solar? Just another cohort consigned to collateral damage for the green revolution just like the poor sods who will be incentivised not to cook a dinner for their families after a hard days work. Stop complaining and think about the kids of the future

The Dunbelievables were really prophets in their own time when they decided to have their dinner in the morning to have a good run at the day.