Energy infrastructure

I presume Ireland, being a paragon of virtue and not one to engage in hypocrisy, will no longer be prepared to take gas from the UK once fracking is taking place? No fracked gas via an LNG terminal on the Shannon estuary and no fracked gas via the Moffat gas interconnector. How virtuous we will be. No doubt the fracking energy minister will soon come up with a cunning plan.

You probably would not need gas with such a source. I imagine if it was that short a backup period this would be an outage/maintenance event and could be scheduled with the cooperation of other countries energy system.

The intermittency of some do called renewable systems is the issue. You need 100% back up even if you over produce.

The fairy tale that for a few days last winter that we produced all our electrical need from wind fails to factor in that gas turbines are not completely turned off or that Moneypoint was completely shut down. It also fails to recognize that these was days mid winter when wind produced virtually nothing during daylight hours

The basic premise with wind is that it will be over producing somewhere and interconnection accross Europe will solve the intermittency nature of it. Solar is a limited source by daylight hours and in Ireland it's a very poor winter source en when it's a fine day. Maximum production is during the middle of the day which is a lower demand part of the day.

Saying that we know wind is intermittent is not recognizing the energy infrastructure issues it's presents and the longterm costs to solve these issues. The only way wind is viable is to build a Hydro storage system. But we are unwilling to do that.

No you probably would not need 6gw but a maintenance event is easier to manage than an intermittent event. For instance you would not need to run turbines on constant standby. Basically you could power them up to standby 12-14 days before the maintenance event and turn them off straight away afterwards.

Your interconnectors would also help. For that matter two smaller systems which had limited maintenance outages would cut your demand in half. Four smaller systems would reduce the necessities for gas back up to a minimal level with interconnectors taking most of the load.

Equinor first..now Shell....

I wonder could it be progressed as state owned generation company?

Probably not allowed with competition laws etc.

@gjim

The Russian sabotage of Nordstream 1 & 2 is where the panic should be at. Next to go will the pipelines from Norway to the UK and Europe.

I'm so glad we have no LNG input capacity, at this historic juncture in time. Good one Eamon, history will remember you.

An attack on the North sea gas lines would be an attack on NATO. The Nordstream was not functional, probably was never going to be and is as much Russian infrastructure as German.

Can you prove who punctured the Nordstream pipes? This 'an attack on NATO' stuff is tiresome. Russia killed 298 mostly Dutch and Australian nationals without any comback. You can repair pipes, but those 298 are gone for good. An unattributable sabotage to some pipes on the sea floor is not going to have NATO launching an all-out against the country with the most nuclear warheads of any nation.

Russia had nothing to lose with Nordstream, as it's obvious no gas was going to be flowing through it for years, if ever. Makes for nice shot across the bows, though.

Different US president. Obama shat in his pants in 2014. Biden the wanted the US intervention in 2014. Obama taught sanctions would work.

While the sabotage may be unattributable if the US did not do it they know that it must have been Russia it is unlikely to be any other country.

Biden will be very clear if it was not the US and will have no hesitation on how to act