Sunday 12 April 2020

Wasteful Spending Must be Cut in Wake of Coronavirus

Now that Ireland is entering a period of extended lockdown, which the people are complying with, people are asking what will the future hold.  Money will of course be tight in the future,  so wasteful spending will need to be curtailed.


The virus will simply not go away post lockdown but will be around in our environment for some considerable period of time. Quite considerable sums will have to be spent recalibrating the health service. In this context we have the European Investment Bank, the Commission's Bank, providing €530 million to fund the Celtic Interconnector to France:


We already have so much wind on the Irish grid, that huge surges occur whenever a low pressure system passes through. Not only are conventional plants being curtailed, but so to are the two Waste to Energy plants in Ireland, 50% of whose electrical output is renewable as that is the fraction of biomass in the incoming municipal waste. Their furnaces have to be maintained at a minimum of 850 C, to combust the incoming waste, so the steam is diverted away from the generators and into the cooling system. in 2018 these two plants curtailed the equivalent renewable electricity of 1.5 times what the Dart used that year, dumping instead the energy (in the case of Dublin Waste to Energy into Dublin Bay). As we know the whole programme is a mess.

If we consider the East West Interconnector built a few years ago from Malahide in Dublin to North Wales, this was a completely uneconomic project, as the Irish Academy of Engineers pointed out several times, neither was there any justification other than to facilitate more wind energy. Hence no commercial bank would have provided the funding. The EIB stepped in with a €300 million loan, the EU Commission gave direct funding of €100 and suddenly the €600 million project was viable. The UK paid not a penny for the infrastructure and our network charges on our electricity bill, which is around 30% of it, went up by about 5% to pay these loans back. We don't have those hundreds of millions to be just wasted in this manner in the months ahead, there is after all resonance in that we need ventilators not wind turbines. 


The millions to be spent on the North south Interconnector now also looks questionable. What of the billions being spent every year on NGOs ? In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, difficult financial decisions will have to be made to ensure essential services such as health and social welfare are maintained. Priorities will have to change.

3 comments:

  1. Take the costs of Celtic Interconnector, second North South Interconnector, new Capacity Market and the additional cost of the ISEM imperfections then add this:

    http://www.eirgridgroup.com/about/strategy-2025/

    How much will it all cost?
    c. 2.2 Billion Euro.

    Who will pay?
    Every business and home in the land.

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  2. I fully agree with you about the interconnectors. I believe the ultimate plan is to do away with thermal plant in this country and instead rely on renewables, batteries and interconnection. This would be a disaster for our island. We need to be self sufficient and this can be achieved by investing in our own reserves of natural gas and LPG along side a sensible amount of wind and other renewables.
    I just have to point out that the east west interconnector does not come in at Malahide it comes ashore at Rush County Dublin.

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  3. It will be impossible to supply Irelands electricity supply 24 hours 365 days a year through interconnection and renewables.There are significant periods of the year when wind output will be very low in Ireland the U.K. No matter how much inter connectors you have you will not be able to import virtually all our electricity requirements over interconnectors. Because it will not be available,Most of the claims of the wind industry?? are essentially fairy tales that ignore reality and science. Wind production is stochastic and chaotic and is not triggered by demand. With the capacity outlined in the farcical 70% target when we have a storming night a significant % of wind production will have be curtailed or dumped.Given the excess installed capacity over even peak demand you will still see significant curtailment and dumping during stormy periods.The real problem with the wind program, ignoring its massive costs and losses, is that they never carried a Feasibility Study, Cost Benefit Analysis, Strategic Environment Assessment, That is why they make more radical proposals to try to get it to work. 250MW add per year will achieve the 37% target now it is over 400 MW per year will achieve the 37%. Which still has not been achieved.The 70% target will not be achieved either. Because when the storm winds blow excess output over demand will either be curtailed or dumped.The problem is the chaotic and stochastic nature of production. Not being triggered by demand and massive output drops that occur as wind turbines age.The best thing they should do with wind farms is sell off the metal as junk and use make work schemes to dig up their foundations. Demand drops brought about by the economic collapse , brought about by the COVIDS_19 Conn, should see a number of wind farm businesses go bankrupt. The accountants will not be clever in their creative accounting to give the impression that wind farms are trading as going concerns . When you continually fly by the seat of your pants you eventually crash into a mountain. We should be prepared to let large parts of the Semi-State system go bankrupt.

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