Rise in PSO Levy Angers Irish Industry

It appears that reality is beginning to bite at The Irish Times in view of the many large industries (some of the biggest employers in the country) complaining about the rise in PSO Levy to fund more wind farms. 

Full Article Here.

In a submission to the CER before it arrived at its final decision, tech giant Microsoft, which employs 1,200 people in the Republic, said this penalises large energy users who are holding energy capacity in reserve to meet anticipated growth.

The multinational also points out that the rate at which the PSO has increased over the last five years represents a “rate shock” for large energy users and “puts the Ireland energy market at a disadvantage”. In a similar vein, Irish food and ingredients giant, Kerry, which employs 4,000 people here, warns that the charge will damage its competitiveness.

Irish Energy Blog has been warning about this for years now, but the warnings have fallen on deaf ears. The Irish Times have been calling for more renewable energy for a long time now and have allowed the wind industry to spread their propaganda far and wide. To be fair, they were not the only ones. 

The only journalist that is going to come out well of this is Colm McCarthy. Of course, there will be no accountability for what will happen in the next few years. An exodus of large companies coupled with a hit from any prolonged Brexit negotiations will see us well back in recession and rising unemployment once again. At a time of record low oil and gas prices.

Will we ever learn....

Poor winds see wind farms make losses

Bad news for wind farm investors - poor winds in the past month see wind farms make losses

The weather for the past 30 days was characterized by quite a lot of high pressure activity, dry weather and low winds. Total output for wind farms in the Republic of Ireland for this period was 280,329 MWhrs. Data from SEM-O for the year 2013/14 shows that wind farms earned € 83 per MWhr and had costs (including depreciation) of € 24.9 million per month.

This means when one does the maths, wind farms suffered a loss of € 1.6 million over the past 30 days.  Bad news for investors and the green energy revolution.

With a couple more months like this, we could be seeing, as Colm McCarthy once predicted, a NAMA for windfarms.



Sources: 

SEM COMMITTEE Generator Financial Performance in the Single Electricity Market (SEM) 19th December 2014

Eirgrid Smart Grid website

Coherent energy policy needed says economist Colm McCarthy

Ireland’s weak political institutions, unassertive public administration and populist media expose taxpayers to regular raids from predators posing as creators of jobs or saviours of the planet. This is most vividly illustrated in the continuing windfarm bonanza. Ireland has an enormous surplus of electricity generation capacity but an entire pseudo-green industry of self-styled entrepreneurs continues to prosper through farming, not the wind, but the taxpayers’ pockets.

There is a terrific article by Colm McCarthy in this week's edition of The Farmers Journal that can be found here (it only takes a few seconds to register) :

http://www.farmersjournal.ie/coherent-energy-policy-needed-183178/



The only problem is I'm not sure if our government understand the word "coherent".