Energy infrastructure

ESB Networks announced today that they've reached 100,000 microgeneration connections in the Republic. Almost all of these are solar panels.

From this, they estimate the installed capacity at 400 MW, which sounds a little high: most urban installs I see are around 3 kW (8 panels), but then I don't know any rural homeowner with less than 5 kW (13/14 panels), so maybe it all works out on average.

20% of that total was connected in the last six months, and at the current rate of 750 new connections per week, we should have 1 GW of domestic rooftop solar in about four years.

It's not useful to think of domestic solar as "generation", because so much of it is self-consumed, but what it does do is flatten daytime demand: the midday system power demand in the Republic of Ireland is between 4,000 and 5,000 MW, so on a sunny day the current 400 MW on roofs will have a significant impact on generation demand.

So essentially MPA's don't offer any protection from damaging developments on key seabird and pelagic fish spawning sites?? Seems to be at odds with their original function as sited by concerned NGO's like BWI,Fair Seas etc. Was in Howth in recently for a tour of Irelands Eye, tour guide and crew said big opposition locally against the windfarm planned for Kish, sighting damage to nearby seabird colonies, fisheries and tourist trade etc.

Your last paragraph is obvious nonsense given the extent Irish Consumers have been price gouged for too long now and where we sit on the league table of EU energy prices!!🙄

Just a couple of short remarks about German consumer electricity prices from a resident:

There is no German electricity price. Every region has a different network operator and they all apply different network operating charges. Electricity is cheaper in Berlin than surrounding Brandenburg, for example.

Almost all the low voltage network is underground. It's rare to see houses supplied with overhead cables. Recently our street needed an upgrade. A new cable was laid from the nearest transformer along ca. 400m of street. This all had to be put underground.

There has been a real cost of integrating more wind into the network. Within Germany there are significant disagreements about wind energy and who should pay for the network upgrades required to tap the resource. In northern and eastern Germany there is significantly more wind available. Here in Brandenburg we are a net exporter but have the highest network operating charges in the country because of the significant expense of equipping the grid for wind power.

In Bavaria where they are much more against wind farms, they get to use electricity from northern Germany and because locally no network upgrades were required, they don't pay as much for it as we do, where it's produced. The federal government aims to end this regional disparity and force regions like Bavaria to pay more so wind producing regions can pay less. That law is currently moving through the Bundestag.

Sure, the adoption of wind has caused our electricity prices to rise but these are one off costs. The network will eventually be fully upgraded and "wind friendly" and these costs will fall back again.

I see a generational increase in electricity prices as being acceptable given it will allow the grid to go carbon neutral for future generations of our species. We're only custodians of the planet during our time on it.

Do I think it was a mistake to start shutting down perfectly functioning nuclear plants in Germany long before they were life expired? Hell yes. It was Merkel's biggest error. A knee jerk reaction to Fukushima. Would I wish to see a return to nuclear? No, I believe with things like mega-flywheels we can keep the synchronicity in the grid using renewables only.

They are also 1000km to the South, have no winters to speak of, have about 8GW of dispatchable hydro (between conventional dams and hydro storage) and Lisbon has literally twice the sunshine hours of Cork. Oh and they also regularly import electricity from Spain, which has nuclear power.

I would suggest that Portugal, much like Norway or Iceland, has it on "easy mode"

But there's a big difference in seabed depths in the North Sea vs the Bay of Biscay. It's a lot easier to pull cables when your boat nearly touches the bottom compared to depths of 3km or more and moving floors due to seismic activity.

There's been nearly 50 wind farms completed in the last 10 years. Nordex and Siemens are the main manufacturers

Exactly, and neither of those are Irish companies nor do they do much manufacturing in Ireland. It's primarily done on the continent, in Mexico, Brazil, Asia etc. The idea that Ireland is or will be a leader in wind tech when the majority is imported just shows how stupid the statement was.

Firstly, IT and semiconductors (Intel) are two totally distinct industries.

Ireland does have a decent semiconductor industry where large amounts of R&D are concentrated here. Even though most chips are made in Taiwan and Korea, Irish arms of MNCs still design large amounts.

The same cannot be said for wind turbines - we do not design, we do not manufacture, all we do domestically is plan projects and tender to European giants like Siemens etc who supply and in some cases install, or else install through partner companies.

The amount of actual value added by Irish employees, Irish arms of MNCs or Irish domestic companies is quite low. It certainly isn't value that can be exported.

The claim that Ireland would be a leader in wind tech is nonsense. There is nothing to back up this claim. We don't design or manufacture the tech. How could we be leaders?

I'd argue on top of that, that Nordex and Siemens probably don't make most of the components.

The certainly don't manufacture the Neodymium magnets, which are the most important part.

They just order parts from Companies X Y and Z and put them together, even the designs are more than likely done by outside contractors.

Being a leader in a field means leveraging the what that field offers more so than anyone else.

The work and knowledge on building turbines will increase rapidly here as time goes on, all going to plan. Ireland is basically sitting on a gold mine when it comes to wind energy, only matched by the Mid-West in America.

Not sure if it's already been posted but Irish Energy Bot estimates renewables during Q1+Q2 accounted for 41% of electricity generation. This would be an improvement on recent years I think.