Energy infrastructure

Markcheese · 04-03-2025 03:36PM

There was a proposal to be able to place a floating regassification vessel next to whitegate , but there could be issues with it , the entrance to the harbour is a bit shallow , no problem with connection to the grid in the area though ..

Grassy Knoll · 04-03-2025 05:12PM

Was thinking Whitegate could tick a few boxes if we are going for a temporary solution (which to be fair if we are serious about transitioning from carbon-based fuel is the way to go).

Busman Paddy Lasty · 04-03-2025 07:44PM

Converting Tarbert power station from oil to gas was definitely mentioned on some part of Boards.ie before. Requires googling though.

Capt'n Midnight · 04-03-2025 08:44PM

https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/fead2-government-approves-development-of-state-led-strategic-gas-emergency-reserve/

The FSRU will have capacity of 170,000 cubic meters of LNG when full, which would be sufficient to supply 200,000 average domestic gas customer demand for 6 months. Alternatively, the FSRU would have the ability to supply the entire gas demand for Ireland for seven days and would be refilled to continue to supply the national gas network.

Grassy Knoll · 04-03-2025 09:27PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123231923#Comment_123231923

I’d be surprised if there is not some mention of buying US gas next week in the States by MM arising from this. Timing is more than convenient…

Also there is all sorts of of talk re buying military hardware, timely were we to say announce the purchase of this new primary radar system from a US supplier

Apogee · 06-03-2025 11:40PM

Some movement on the Silvermines Hydro storage (296MW/2175MWh) project.

Plans to establish a €650 million hydroelectric pumped storage power project located at the former mine site Silvermines, Co Tipperary, have taken a major step forward. This follows An Bord Pleanála confirming that the Silvermines Hydroelectric Energy Storage Project has been deemed mature enough to enter the permit granting process for Projects of Common Interest.
[…]
The Project of Common Interest procedure now being overseen follows three steps - notification; pre-application procedure and statutory permit granting procedure.
After the permit granting procedure, An Bord Pleanála will make a final decision on the project.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/e650-million-silvermines-hydro-project-goes-before-an-bord-pleanala-1737576.html

https://www.silvermineshydro.ie/

specialbyte · 07-03-2025 01:29AM

Silvermines Hydro with 296MW/2175MWh can discharge at max rate for about 7 hours 20 minutes.

For comparison, Turlough Hill is 292MW/1590MWh so can discharge at max rate for about 5 hours 25 mins.

Interesting that both are staying marginally below the 300MW size.

Getting this project online is so key to integrating higher and higher levels of intermittent renewables onto the grid and reducing curtailment (turning off renewables when supply > demand). Hopefully they get approval quickly from ABP (miracles do happen)

Grassy Knoll · 07-03-2025 01:43AM

great to see if it can proceed. A good,addition to our generation capacity. Is this the only viable pumped,storage option in the country?

gjim · 07-03-2025 10:00AM

I'm not sure the economics stand up in the current environment of low grid-scale battery prices. Grid scale battery cost per kWh has dropped to $165 in 2024 in the US. Or under $300m for 1GWh capex. Batteries also can be located flexibly around the grid so are more useful than hydro and require far less supporting infrastructure in terms of transmission. Battery facilities are deployed incrementally so provide immediate benefit instead of waiting years for a hydro plant to be built before a watt can be extracted.

quantum_technician · 07-03-2025 11:25AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123239603#Comment_123239603

Viable? LFP and Sodium Ion batteries is where the effort should be expended. They can slot in where'er the need may be adjacent to HV lines and population centres.

I see nothing critical about this project to anyone other than the proposers of it.

Apogee · 07-03-2025 01:15PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123239938#Comment_123239938

I think the Ballynahone Iron-air BESS is the largest capacity storage project proposed so far at 4,000MWh - larger than Silvermines+Turlough Hill combined (albeit with very different discharge rate of 40MW). Not easy to find costs for this, but the parent company claim installed costs of USD20/kWh, so ~USD80M.

Planning approval for this project has, unsurprisingly, been appealed to ABP.

josip · 07-03-2025 01:42PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123240663#Comment_123240663

And unsurprisingly by a usual submitter who I thought was fully occupied with slurry according to his most recent press release. Is there any merit to his submission this time around?

https://www.eplanning.ie/DonegalCC/AppFileRefDetails/2461497/0

Looks like he's just stating the obvious about the SAC which I assume would have been dealt with by the applicant anyway.

Sweetman.pdf

gjim · 07-03-2025 01:46PM

Very interesting @Apogee but it seems targeting a different aspect of the electricity market. The more traditional LI storage systems are designed for intraday operation so usually have a discharge capacity of a few hours (2 or 4 is common) to meet the sweet spot of selling during the daily peak while charging off-peak. Most pumped hydro aim for the same type of operational characteristics (daily balancing) - like Turlough Hill. 100 hours discharge at 40MW is not a useful format for earning a return using daily price fluctuations and I'm curious about the business model, even if, in terms of cost of energy storage, the price looks ridiculously low. How many cycles are they aiming at per year, I wonder? Battery storage systems make money by cycling the energy and the more frequent they can cycle - buying low and selling high - the more economic they are.

bk · 07-03-2025 02:55PM

Yes, I feel LFP BESS has already bypassed the need for a Silvermines/Turlough Hill type setup. In just 18 months, the equivalent of 3 x Silvermines worth of BESS systems were brought online! Quiet a staggering figure when you consider how quickly and relatively easily these systems were brought online.

The BESS systems basically arrive in pre-built containers on ships and are basically just plugged into the grid and ready good to go. Obviously not quiet that simple, but not far off, vastly more straight forward to pumped hydro and pretty much anything else other then solar.

They have the flexibility to be placed almost anywhere, so can be positioned where they best help to balance the grid and can be easily scaled up by just adding more containers (assuming grid connections, etc.).

The prices of battery cells are dropping at a shocking rate. They have already hit $50 per kWh and even $40 for BESS systems in China. The battery industry is predicting this to drop another 50% this year to hit $20 to $25 per kWh! Pretty crazy stuff. I can't see pumped hydro competing with this.

The Iron-air systems are a bit different, targeting more long duration storage, rather then the 4 hour or so that LFP BESS and pumped hydro target.

quantum_technician · 08-03-2025 12:04PM

Plugging in a battery storage unit where there is already a connection to the grid is always going to be cheaper than trying to connect an inconveniently located wind, solar or hydro plant to the network; it is a cost that the consumer doesn't have to eat.

KrisW1001 · 08-03-2025 04:10PM

Transmission and transformation losses plus transmission capacity constraints mean it's better to put batteries nearer to generation.

quantum_technician · 08-03-2025 05:43PM

And every single one of those sites is already looking to tuck in batteries alongside. Those sites are not infinite as you should well know.

I said it is easier to connect a battery installation to the net than a wind farm and in your haste to pass remark lost the nuance of the comment .

Capt'n Midnight · 08-03-2025 06:11PM

At present we need at least 25% synchronous generation on the grid.

Pumped hydro gives you this which can be used to provide stability to allow you to use non-sync stuff like wind / solar / batteries / undersea interconnectors.

KrisW1001 · 09-03-2025 10:09AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123245165#Comment_123245165

Ah, our gossamer friend has been banned again… he was only getting started.

To clarify the point he took up wrong, though, large scale battery isn't planned for installation directly on windfarm sites, but in locations that are close to several windfarms, but still at the periphery of the grid.

AccessEducation · 09-03-2025 11:55AM

Bord Na Mona is getting in on the BESS business at their bog land Wind Turbine Farm in Derrinlough, Boora. It is being sold to AWS for the benefit of their customers overseas. Perform an internet search for it yerselves if you are interested in the shameless rape of the country.

This eyesore benefits nobody in the locality… the Country will be carpeted with these wind turbine and battery storage sites.

The Wind Turbines are the thin end of the wedge to get a HV line(at the expense of the public, not the proposers) to a remote location which should be virgin peatland habitat that would otherwise be left undeveloped…then come the BESS to make use of the HV lines. Then proposers enjoy supernormal profits for the best part of two decades while the contract agreed has to be honoured.

Between Coillte planting practically nothing but Conifer and BnM destroying peatland, ruining the Natural habitats of rural Ireland for nothing but corporate greed.

The rural dwellers are oblivious or brow-beaten in to accepting undesirable development and cheerleaders for the vested interests in "renewable" rejoice.

Ireland is FUBAR.

@Chris; do you not think users who are banned on this forum would not be taking steps to protect their regular access to the general Forum?

riddlinrussell · 10-03-2025 02:05PM

FYI the equivalent to rainforest destruction in Ireland was... well, rainforest destruction, the native woodland of Ireland being completely destroyed over the last x centuries.

Most bogland species would be completely unaffected by a few wind turbines (obviously in cases where tyey are built properly as to not cause landslides etc!)

Though much irony in that there are several "nature preserves" on bogland that I know regularly remove "scrub" (aka. Natural woodland succession) which would have been the forested status quo for many of our bogs in prehistory.

hans aus dtschl · 10-03-2025 04:16PM

But why do you keep getting banned?

Birdnuts · 11-03-2025 12:57AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123250503#Comment_123250503

Nonsense - windfarm construction on such sites entirely destroys the natural drainage needed for peatland recovery, plus displaces many bird species associated with such habitats

marno21 · 11-03-2025 01:28AM

Some drone footage of the Celtic Interconnector works in Cork

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9ZolMK396w

cnocbui · 11-03-2025 02:01AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123252528#Comment_123252528

Did you see a French court has ordered a wind farm torn down as it's been killing Golden eagles? Way to go.

ted1 · 21-03-2025 11:46PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122981251#Comment_122981251

Romania is a much lower cost country.
Other countries that have had low prices like the uk have struggled to deliver on the project at that got low prices.

josip · 22-03-2025 09:19PM

Since you raised the topic of habitat destruction, why didn't the people of Offaly have a problem with the draining and stripping the Bog of Allen? Something that was orders of magnitude worse than the wind farms you're complaining about.

gjim · 23-03-2025 12:00PM

Ireland would have no problems with Energy infrastructure if the Data Centres weren't soaking up renewable electricity supply faster than it is added and they are trying to tap directly in to the gas network as the demand is insatiable.

If this were true, then it would suggest an obvious policy - just have the government spend the 10 or 20 billion to CPO all the datacenters, bulldoze them and then we'd have "no problems with energy infrastructure".

We could then save all that money being wasted on building inter-connectors, expanding the transmission system, adding GW of capacity, grid scale storage and improving energy efficiency generally. 🙄

cnocbui · 23-03-2025 01:26PM

Data centres are located here for the cost savings on cooling, with other things like political stability an added bonus.

How much do they pay per KWh?

dmakc · 23-03-2025 03:07PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123288848#Comment_123288848

Indeed. And the recently approved Tarbert / Shannon-LNG 600MW OCGT seeks to only send ~350MW of its capacity to the grid (contracted), while the remaining ~250MW seems to be aimed at a data centre application to follow.

Makes me wonder about the consistency of the government's 2GW of flexible gas target for "energy security" by 2030, when we're fine to reserve 250MW of capable generation for data centres yet to be applied for.

Energy infrastructure

Comments