Energy infrastructure

No mention that they were scared of spiders either.

I never forget the spiders

The interconnectors are looking incredibly vulnerable now. I had gone off the idea pretty much, but it's a big advantage of nuclear power that you can store years worth of fuel on site. A significantly greater amount of gas storage (than a single FSRU) looks to be needed either.

No, he means an NPP in Carnsore using uranium ore from Mount Leinster.

It's rare that anything is "exported due to the 75% limit". While Priority Dispatch trades can happen, GB are not obliged to facilitate them. They typically have their own renewables at similar output anyway.

Imports and exports are 99% dictated by market results. You would expect higher exports in windier periods due to the prices offered but ours is typically more expensive than that in GB so we end up importing. That's even with the losses on the interconnectors included and paid for. The question is - why aren't Irish renewables submitting cheaper prices to the coupling algorithm? Why aren't they submitting negative prices to ensure they generate?

Have no idea

It's not clear to me from that article whether the new Bellacorrick turbines will remain a separate Bellacorrick v2 farm or will be fully incorporated into Oweninny as Phase 3?

What's the timeframe for the new turbines being operational?

Over 100MW of new year round capacity would be a significant addition.

Unless another circuit materialises to Bellacorick, it's just 100MW of additional constraints. They can barely export the existing wind in that region. To think of the 400kV Grid West connection that was abandoned on a whim...

Why are Wind Energy Ireland forever whinging about dispatch down due to imports during high wind then?

There may be a few hours lag between Irish wind pickup and GB, or occasionally a storm that glances our coast but not our neighbours but they aren't the norm. Most of our wind comes from the SW and continues to our easterly neighbours.

That's not how markets work. Greenlink and all other interconnectors flow based on the price differential in each bidding zone. The SEM is effectively a single bidding zone, so we are either importing or exporting 99% of the time. GB didn't go for zonal pricing so you won't suddenly see exports on Greenlink while Ewic and Moyle import.

There may be occasions with counter flows due to the prices in both being negative and the Euphemia algorithm trying to create artificial demand by burning energy or the TSOs have counter traded for grid security but those times are few and far between.

It takes a lot less than 24 hours for storms to reach GB. Typically we have a 3-4 hour lag for wind generation pick up as it crosses Ireland but the bulk of the GB wind is in Scotland, which picks up within an hour or two after NI.

As for dispatch down, it's any reduction in renewables with respect to their availability. That can be for grid constraints or system curtailment or just over supply. It's very difficult to distinguish between whether something is constrained by the grid or there's just too much available when the SEMC rule set says constraints before curtailment. Basically Eirgrid has to classify the reduction based on the system at a point in time, even if there's more than 1 reason, or that reason changes. But if it was just constraints, there'd be a lot more focus on building infrastructure. Somehow I suspect that if we had all the grid in the world, we'd still have significant dispatch down due to curtailment. We simply can't accommodate all of our renewables when it blows and Europe doesn't want all of our excess at the prices we offer. s