"Green" policies are destroying this country

From 2023 in China, showing the future.

https://metalworkingnews.info/worlds-largest-wind-turbine-is-now-fully-operational/

The future is now, there is a matter of materials stress, making turbines too big as Siemens and others have discovered equals higher failure rates, leading to downtime and warranty costs as Siemens accountants discovered, that led to failure and German taxpayer funded bailout.

That's a bit like saying the Titanic showed the end of large ocean liner development. Lessons will be learned and it will be made bigger and better.

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2024/05/21/siemens-gamesa-15-mw-wind-turbines-for-iberdrolas-windanker-offshore-wind-farm-havfram-contracted-for-installation/

Bigger is better!

Borrowing for an infrastructure project which can give us energy independence is a far different proposal to building big houses and estates where people didn't want to live. Companies will of course need to make profits. Helped subsidies/grants. Staying on fossil fuels will cost everybody more in the long run.

Record wind generation in April 2024!

https://www.renewableinstitute.org/ireland-reports-successful-month-for-wind-power-generation/

Eamon Ryan should be proud!

There you go with the Nuclear option again! Whatever about wind generation its a non starter here.

Somewhat crass is it not seeing as over 1,500 people lost their lives with the sinking of the Titanic, but then the analogy with the Irish Green Party is quite apt. In both case the higher your socioeconomic status the better you fared.

Whatever you think yourself, but The Holocaust was 80 years ago and I wouldn`t make flippant comparisons in relation too it, but maybe that`s just me.

Still, at least we agree that the analogy of the higher your socioecomic status the better you fared with both the Titanic and the Irish Green Party js spot on.

Talking about energy independence creating wind farms clearly show how much you know about the subject.

Oil, coal & gas. Wind has capacity factor of ~30% (depending on site can range from 20% to 40%), solar in Ireland is 10%, this means they spend a lot of time NOT working. Wind energy Ireland is fond of quoting nameplate capacity an issuing press releases when the wind blows. We have gotten used to being able to walk into a dark room and the light works when we turn it on, the electrical grid is designed and managed in a way to ensure the power is available on demand.

Reliability engineering means you have to design a grid to maintain 50Hz and be able to recover from failure. All plant has a duty cycle and most maintenance on plants is done abound now to be ready for peak winter demand. Also need redundancy because generation plants can trip out (e.g. lightning strike) all of this is run in tight tolerances by the grid managers. Eirgrid have had to loosen tolerance specifications and the ESB is installing a synchronous condenser to accommodate non-synchronous generation sources (wind & solar)

There is the matter of baseload power, curtailment and standby generation costs, frequency stabilization services, reactive power, battery to manage sudden generation drops and allow time for reliable generation to come online, managing the grid becomes more complex and expensive. The Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy set by the CRU keeps keeps going up with the renewables. Wind energy Ireland likes to tell us they are cheap by quoting levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) metrics, that is not how electricity prices are set and it is not reflected in our electricity bills.

Wind and solar means the grid needs sources of reliable generation, in Ireland that is gas turbine combined cycle power generation that can be rapidly bought online. Remember solar generation goes to 0 every day and effectively disappears off the grid from November to March and wind generation does drop to insignificant levels (even become a draw on the power grid), both do this when power is most needed. This means the electrical grid must have full redundancy to accommodate weather and seasonal dependent generation, that means capital investment and fuel & maintenance costs, even it is standing idle.

Wind and solar are unreliable and require a massive support infrastructure, this is not cheap. What happens in Germany, the reliable generators can see the weather forecast for the day ahead and don't bid or they are price takers, they also see when there is no wind and set the price accordingly. In fact there have been occasions when the grid operators have had to get on their knees and beg the reliable generators to provide power, because the price is not sufficient. To try and offset that Germany & Britain have built inter-connectors to its neighbours, that is driving up prices for domestic customers in those countries, the Swedish government rejected the latest interconnector bid to Germany.

In a significant move, the Swedish government has rejected the proposed 700 MW Hansa PowerBridge subsea power connection between Sweden and Germany. Energy Minister Ebba Busch cited inefficiencies in the German electricity market as the primary reason for the decision, emphasizing that connecting southern Sweden—already facing an electricity production deficit—with Germany could lead to higher prices and increased market instability.

The Hansa PowerBridge project, a collaboration between grid operators Svenska Kraftnät and Germany’s 50Hertz, aimed to facilitate the transfer of renewable energy from the Nordics to Germany. However, the Swedish government raised concerns about the current state of the German power grid. Unlike Sweden, which is divided into four power price zones to manage grid bottlenecks, Germany operates as a single power market zone. This structure has led to significant congestion, particularly in moving power from the wind-rich north to the energy-consuming south, prompting calls for a market split—a move Germany resists due to potential price hikes and industrial impact in its southern regions. source

There is no such thing as a free lunch, inter-connectors are driving up prices for French, Norwegian and Swedish domestic customers. When the wind is blowing in Ireland, it is also blowing in the UK, which means wind turbine generation cannot set the price, this Saudia Arabia of wind nonsense, means even if the turbines and sufficient inter-connectors are built that we will be giving away power for free, obviously the wind turbine operators want to make profits and the inter-connector has maintenance and capital costs - who pays for that?