Will The Lights Stay on in Ireland ?

A new report by the European Network of Grid Operators (ENTSOE) has shown that Great Britain may not have sufficient electricity generation capacity by 2020 to keep the lights on. This has a knock on affect here in Ireland where by 2022 it is envisaged that we will become more and more dependent on interconnectors.

ENTSOE have placed Britain at the highest risk level of grid blackouts in EU but state that expensive Capacity Mechanisms may prevent them from happening. For the layman reading, this is due to lack of investment in baseload generation - gas, coal, nuclear. Lack of sufficient baseload generation in UK means interconnectors to Ireland will lie idle (where Ireland is also strapped for reliable means of power to export to UK). 

Eirgrid this year published their generation adequacy assessments up till 2025. 

Take a look at the bottom section which excludes interconnection. Green means we have sufficient generation, red means we don't. By 2022, things start getting tight, by 2023 and 2014 we are in blackout territory, highly dependent on UK to send us spare power. 

Of course, we have spent billions on new wind farms. But as ENTSEO state :

The contribution of RES [renewables] for adequacy purposes is less than for thermal plant.

I've dealt with this concept before - capacity credit.  Wind farms don't keep the lights on, power stations do. 

There is a further problem for the Irish Grid operators - Eirgrid - and that is the new data centres that are been built around the country. They consume lots of power - Eirgrid estimate that if all the data centres that are contracted are built, they will add a whopping 1,700MW on top of peak demand of about 5,000MW. This would mean we get into the red a lot quicker. 

There is a quick fix to this, of sorts, and I hinted at it earlier - Capacity Mechanisms. This involves load shedding - paying factories large amounts of money to close for a period and / or diesel generation which can ramp up alot quicker than power stations. Ireland had about 60MW of diesel generation in 2014 (referred to as Demand Side Units), we now have 230MW ! And Eirgrid have said :

The capacity of Demand Side Units in Ireland has increased to 230 MW, and is set to increase further. 

How ironic that the green revolution, the de-carbonization of our grid, the clean, green future has lead to us using more and more diesel generation - the most polluting form of electricity production. And of course, our neighbours England are also going down this path. 

Incidentally, the data centres will have back up power in the event of widespread blackouts. No, not windmills, yes you guessed it - diesel generators. The new Apple data centre in Galway will have 18 generators with a total capacity of 288MW. The new green revolution is upon us !

Broadcast of Wind Energy Advert Deemed Unlawful

A TV advertisement, featuring John F Kennedy, extolling the virtues of wind energy was yesterday deemed unlawful by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland because the advertisement was politically linked to policy development and wind energy guidelines and was intended to influence government policy in respect of energy.

This proves that Ireland still has strong independent oversight in some areas. The complaint was made by Francis Clauson who owns the first Passiv House in Ireland. Amazingly, his annual heating bill is now lower than his PSO Levy bill, that is used to pay for wind turbines. 

Unfortunately, the wind lobby was more effective than the Passiv House lobby.

Full article on the wind advertisement can be found here.

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....

Hinkley Point

I've written previously about the economics of electricity generation here. 

The Hinkley Point debacle has confirmed my analysis. Modern power stations have become uneconomical to run, investors demand large subsidies as incentive to build them, governments have to keep the lights on while satisfying the ever increasing demands of the greens and their cohorts in the renewable unreliable energy industry.

It can only end in disaster, unless that is, Greg Clark and Theresa May can bring normality back to the post Brexit UK energy market. 

They will need to move quicker on the Article 50 button before the lights go out.  

ESRI Report on Brexit

The ESRI report on Brexit warns about the implications for the All Island Electricity Market. ESRI economic forecasts have being proven wrong before, most famously when they predicted a "soft landing" in 2008. This recent report seems to have flaws as well.

•  The first point that needs to be noted is the fact that an all-island electricity market has existed since 2007. Interconnection between Ireland and Northern Ireland is particularly important for Northern Ireland which relies on electricity imports from Ireland to make up for insufficient local electricity generation capacity.

Northern Ireland has a capacity shortage. Now that they are outside the EU, they can ignore EU Directives on power stations, reverse the closure of their coal plants, and open a new power station if required. This is an easy solution to their problems, it's also cheaper than building the North South Interconnector, but somehow ESRI failed to spot it.

• Hence the UK government considered trading in renewable electricity with Ireland, which could have reduced the cost of UK compliance. However, negotiations on this strategy stalled because of a reluctance to pay the necessary subsidy to Irish producers, in spite of the fact that it would have reduced the overall cost of compliance for the UK. 

Cost was only one issue. The UK officials realized that there was a high correlation of wind between the two islands i.e when wind is blowing in the UK, it is blowing in Ireland and vice versa. This reduces the benefits of importing wind from Ireland.

•  If the UK left the EU it would no longer be subject to EU regulatory measures to deal with a possible crisis situation in the case of a gas or oil shortage. Ireland would then have to consider how best to provide protection from very unlikely, but potentially catastrophic outcomes. Gas supplies are of crucial importance to Ireland because gas plays a central role in electricity generation. Because of this, any interruption to supply could have very serious consequences. 

I thought that Ireland's goal was to be energy independent by building wind farms ? So why will there be a problem if UK can't supply gas to us anymore ? An inherent, but unwritten, assumption in the ESRI report is that investment in wind energy will not make us materially any less dependent on gas imports.  So why are they pushing the wind policy ?

In reality, should a wide gap open up between UK and Ireland in terms of one country pursuing EU energy policy for the next 10-20 years and the other not, then Ireland will become more and more dependent on UK for electricity. EU energy policy may well result in the closure of uneconomical Irish power stations whilst UK will be free to build more.

Collapse of the Sterling ?

Non Compliance with Aarhus Convention - Update

Reblogged from The Law is My Oyster with thanks to Neil, Pat and David for their efforts.

The Irish Authorities have got themselves into a precarious state of affairs viz a viz their responsibilities under International and European environmental law :

The first session involved the opening statements.  These are delivered in writing to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC) beforehand, which allows a speaker from both sides to paraphrase and highlight the main points underpinning the Communication and the Party’s Response  in about ten minutes or so.

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And then it was the turn of the Curator. The Curator is the ACCC member who was assigned the case, researches it, makes some sort of preliminary assessment (and perhaps recommendations?) to the rest of the Committee in closed session before the parties are invited in.

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The Curator asks ‘clarification questions’ to both the Communicant (us) and the Party (the Irish government) – sometimes a common question for both sides to answer, and sometimes a question directly and specifically at one party but the other is entitled to respond to the answer to the question. It is a very European civil-law way of doing it and you need to listen to the questions carefully, as they often have a sting in the tail.

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Full Article Here - https://the-law-is-my-oyster.com/2016/06/28/report-on-communication-acccc2014112-regarding-complaint-of-non-compliance-against-ireland/