Eirgrid warned this week of an Amber Alert due to high peak demand, a loss of a number of generators and low wind generation :
“There were a number of reasons that gave rise to Wednesday’s alert. Firstly, two of the three units at Moneypoint, the country’s largest power station, suffered technical failures and were not available. This resulted in the loss of 570 megawatts of electricity.
“Generation at Whitegate power station in Cork totalling 450 megawatts was also unavailable due to technical issues. A 243 megawatt generator at Tarbert power station was called up but could not respond due to technical problems.
“The electricity market was set up for Ireland to export renewable energy via the two interconnectors (EWIC in the South and Moyle in the North) linking Ireland and GB.
“Following the issuing of the amber alert we were able to reverse the flows on the Moyle Interconnector and on EWIC shortly after that. There was also a drop in wind generation greater than was forecast prior to the alert being issued.
“There was no loss of electricity during the alert which ended by 6.20pm on [Wednesday],” the spokesman explained.
Apparently the last time we hit such a demand was back in 2010 but there was no mention of an alert back then. In 2010 there was 1,405MW of wind installed on the grid. In 2019 this reached 4,235MW (+2.8 GW). The 500MW EWIC interconnector was commissioned in 2012.
So the question has to be asked, how is it that with 3.3GW of additional generation equipment, we are now struggling to meet demand?
We also had an Amber Alert in the summer of this year . What caused that one. Essentially the grid is now unstable and any combination of unexpected or unplanned for events will crash it. It is only a matter of time.
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