Energy infrastructure

The human eye perceives things differently than when the same object is shown in a photograph. If you have ever tried to capture a firework display on camera the resulting pictures pale compared to the actual display which you observed. A wind farm 5KM off shore is a major reduction in visual amenity. It has to be worth it and for the greater good to justify its presence.

Right there you have the very reason Gazprom funded Green anti-nuclear movements in Europe and bribed a well known German Chancellor.

The best renewables capacity factors are less than 50%, meaning you are forever going to be locked into burning vast amounts of gas. The Orcs just love renewables and hate nuclear for this very reason. They are apparently engaged in talks with the US about bringing about the resumption of gas exports to Europe.

Being in favour of renewables is both Pro Orc and pro CO2 - the bad sort of irony.

Under Trump the US is now burning 45% of its corn crop via the biofuel scam - you must be very happy…..🙄

Under Trump the US is now burning 45% of its corn crop via the biofuel scam - you must be very happy…..🙄

Is this supposed to be a "gotcha"? 🙄

I'm not happy, and I wasn't happy when the same thing was happening under predecessors like Biden and I'm not happy with the special-interest lobbying going on trying to promote the same thing in the EU. Growing crops for biofuel production is a horrible and expensive form of greenwashing that makes no sense at any level.

It might shock you, but do you realize that most of us don't just pick a side from some fake "culture war" dichotomy and then mindlessly adopt a bunch of positions and opinions, like you seem to do?

Particularly when it comes to thinking about electricity generation technology?

We're trying to have an engineering discussion here, not a political one. But you keep seeing imaginary attacks on your "identity".

To who exactly in Ireland is this Datacenter other than the proposers a "necessity"?

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0509/1511958-data-centre/

Scarce resources will go in to building it and powering it for the rest of its design life.

I do not believe that trickle down enviro-economics as espoused by big Industry works especially when it involves diverting scarce resources to big industry with low multiplier effects like data centers.

Really? Was Gerhard Schroeder MAGA? How about Frau Merkel? Both of these German leaders started or accelerated Germany's nuclear phase-out and concurrent increase in gas imports from Russia.

A policy which has been an utter disaster. BTW Trump's domestic policy or campaign slogan in 2016 was "Trump digs coal" showing he favoured low costs, energy independence and jobs for miners above any other concern.

Naturally I don't agree with that as coal has been obsolete since the 1950s when we developed atomic energy and should have been phased out for nuclear replacements from then on.

To be fair, the corn ethanol stuff didn't start in 2017.

Energy is a necessity, but these ugly, expensive, unreliable, bird chomping, bat killing monstrosities are not a requirement for energy. In fact, they're not even a requirement for clean energy. France has had near-zero CO2/kwh energy since the 1980s, but we insist on spending decades, untold billions and industrialising our landscape on a scale almost unprecedented in human history, just to get a pathetic imitation of what the French did half a century ago.

That, most certainly, is not a necessity.

The thing is, we can blame Russia for carpet bombing Bakhmut, Mariupol etc but carpet bombing all our hilltops and coastlines with these ghastly metal/fibreglass monsters, we're doing that to ourselves for no real reason, thanks ironically to so-called "environmentalists" 😐️

As for me, if I were presented with the choice of the following in my "back yard" of 1) an incinerator 2) a thermal power station 3) wind turbines or 4) a nuclear plant. I would go with the nuclear plant. Every. single. time.

Gas in Europe also emboldened Vladimir Putin to attack Russia's neighbours knowing he had the rest of Europe by the short and curlies. For that reason alone, we can conclude that the decision to promote gas power in Europe was a grave mistake.

As for the rest of your second paragraph, it's fine in theory but the fact remains that as as of now, the only way to get a near-zero CO2 power grid is through either hydroelectricity or nuclear, or if your country is like Iceland, geothermal. As a practical matter, if we desire "carbon neutral" energy, the only examples we have to follow today are those of France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and Ontario in Canada.

France | App | Electricity Maps

And I'm not sure you want to use Spain as an example given that their overreliance on solar power helped cause the recent Iberian power outage.

The Night the Lights Went Out in Geor- er, Spain || Peter Zeihan

With all due respect but that paper is compromised by it's funder.

I looked into the issue after reading your post and came across this interesting tidbit from the BBC >>>

Something a little more relevant to Ireland as opposed to a potentially biased report from Greece.

It states...

"Few studies have investigated the phenomenon, but estimates suggest that between 10,000 and 100,000 birds are killed by turbine blade strikes annually in the UK."

"That’s a lot, but it’s worth noting that approximately 55 million birds are killed in the UK each year by domestic cats."

"Nevertheless, research suggests there may be ways to make wind turbines safer for wildlife. For example, a small-scale study in Norway found that painting one of the wind turbines blades black, reduced bird deaths by 70 per cent."

So perhaps the solution lies in painting a blade black.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.6592

No conflict of interest declared.

Solar has been getting dispatched down for the last few weeks. Does anyone know why is that?

Is it only occurring for some specific farms? GreenCollective believe it's happening for Gillinstown and Gallanstown.

(I'm interested in the technical reasons for this, not the political agenda theories.)

Sorry I don't have the answer but am interested about where you get your data? The eirgrid dashboard need a serious overhaul.

Total red herring - cats kill common garden birds around human settlements. Wind Farms kill a large number of rare soaring birds like eagles, vultures etc. and displace them from already shrinking habitat. The link I posted is from the top experts in Vulture Conservation in Europe working across key habitats. Their work is published across relevant scientific journals like Nature etc. Your attempt to rubbish there work says alot about your own agenda. This is also relevant to key seabird habitats in the Irish Sea and organisations like Birdwatch Ireland have already sounded the alarm on the governments developer led approach that has totally ignored the presence of endagered birds like Roseate Terns on Rockabill Island which will be heavily impacted if the likes of the Dublin Array goes ahead. ABP have recently sought more information from these developers as their initial EIS failed to properly account for these impacts

One interesting thing from Green Collective's data is the shift in the use of Turlough Hill pumped storage plant.

It used to pump mostly at night when demand is lowest and wind is strongest. Now, on sunny days, it's pumping during peak solar hours.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0512/1512503-lng-kerry/

Looks like it will be another few years before it gets the go-ahead. Whether you think it's right or wrong, the delay that the judicial review will cause is the worst thing about this