Is choosing Airtricity a "green" choice?

gary82

Hey,

With Bord Gais now cutting the cost of electricty I've been calculating up my bills under differet tariffs. Our last bill would have come out at;

ESB: €344
Bord Gais: €304
Airtricity: €314

I'm curious though - does choosing airtricity actually promote the use of wind power in any way or are they all just coming out of the same pool of supply?

If it did I wouldn't mind the extra €5 a month, but i suspect it doesn't......?

Gary

Cheeble

IMHO, it depends on whether you separate out the generation part of the business from the supply part. In the case of ESB, I think they were forced to do so by the regulator, but the same requirement did not apply to Airtricity (if anybody knows better, please contribute).

Airtricity, the generator, operates a greater proportion of wind farms than ESB or Bord Gais.

Airtricity, the supply company, buys its electricity from the same pool as everybody else.

Then it gets complicated because Airtricity as a wind farm operator relies on non-renewable generators to provide the capacity for when the wind doesn't blow. To put it naively, if you build a 100MW wind farm, you also need to build a 100MW Gas Turbine power station. It could be argued that Airtricity dodge this issue by leaving it to somebody else?

Heroditas

Airtricity can also import from the UK via the interconnector. So you could even be purchasing nuclear fueled electricity from them.

derry

Cheeble wrote: »

Then it gets complicated because Airtricity as a wind farm operator relies on non-renewable generators to provide the capacity for when the wind doesn't blow. To put it naively, if you build a 100MW wind farm, you also need to build a 100MW Gas Turbine power station. It could be argued that Airtricity dodge this issue by leaving it to somebody else?

If you build a turbine generting station using jet turbine engines they can switch on quickly and switch off quickly.So when they see the wind is dropping they can ramp up the fossil fuel power prouction to meet the drop in power from less wind . If the wind blows for three days solid with the same power the jet engines are often switched off and not using fuel or on tick over consuming a lot less fuel.Because ROI wind is often predicable days in advance they can figure how many turbines to have on tick over to jump in when wind goes lowwer and how many to safely switch off when the wind ramps up.

The facts are due to the fact that ROI is the second most windy place on the planet it makes wind power more attractive possibly profitable than in Denmark or Germany where the wind power is marginal if not losss making.

We now in ROI do 13% of all power from wind which isnt to bad considering how few wind farms we got here.

Time will tell whats best but for energy security for ROI the wind power is a good bet.We can expect for all sorts of reasons price spikes in oil gas and fossil fuels maybe even interuptions in suppy so we need indiginious alternitive power solutions and when there is no oil or gas or coal to be had for some reason like a local war or workers strikes whatever the wind power production to the grid then will be priceless


Derry

Macha

Each electricity provider is obliged to disclose their fuel mix. In 2006, 89% of Airtricity's electricity came from renewables:

http://www.airtricity.com/ireland/customer_center/your_bill_explained/

In 2007, ESB's renewable contribution was 9%:

https://www.esb.ie/esbcustomersupply/residential/your_account/fuel_mix.jsp

No figures on Bord Gais that I can see but you can draw your conclusions on the difference between ESB and Airtricity from the above.

cavedave

The actual numbers of CO2–equivalent emitted per megawatt-hour of electricity generate are here.

Coal Gas Solar PV Nuclear Wind Hydro
kg CO2/MWeh
ExternE [1] 815 362 53 20 7 -

So switching to gas is a lot better then staying with mainly coal. What the ESB get power from is also here.

ednwireland

Heroditas wrote: »

Airtricity can also import from the UK via the interconnector. So you could even be purchasing nuclear fueled electricity from them.

there was a guy on the newstalk business show on saturday and he said absolutely not on you getting nuclear power generated power through the interconnector, they must install a special electron filter when you sign up with them i reckon (/sarcasm)

Heroditas

ednwireland wrote: »

there was a guy on the newstalk business show on saturday and he said absolutely not on you getting nuclear power generated power through the interconnector, they must install a special electron filter when you sign up with them i reckon (/sarcasm)

Indeed!

Cheeble

taconnol wrote: »

Each electricity provider is obliged to disclose their fuel mix. In 2006, 89% of Airtricity's electricity came from renewables.......

........In 2007, ESB's renewable contribution was 9%........

........you can draw your conclusions on the difference between ESB and Airtricity from the above.

In 2007/8 the SSE (i.e. Airtricity) contribution from renewables was 8.9%, and from nuclear was 5.5%.

You can read about their radioactive waste calculation here: http://www.scottish-southern.co.uk/SSEInternet/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=15350

Nothing in the energy market is straightforward.

Macha

Cheeble wrote: »

In 2007/8 the SSE (i.e. Airtricity) contribution from renewables was 8.9%, and from nuclear was 5.5%.

You can read about their radioactive waste calculation here: http://www.scottish-southern.co.uk/SSEInternet/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=15350

Nothing in the energy market is straightforward.

We're talking about the Irish market.

Cheeble

You mean the SEM?

The original question was whether buying from Airtricity promotes the use of wind power. I'm not sure any of us has provided a satisfactory answer.

Skillie

if 89% of the power they sell comes from renewables then surely that answers the question?

Webbs

Cheeble wrote: »

You mean the SEM?

The original question was whether buying from Airtricity promotes the use of wind power. I'm not sure any of us has provided a satisfactory answer.

Have Airtricity built any new wind turbines in the last 5 years? If they have then I assume that the increase in customer base has promoted the use of wind turbines.