Eh? Why on earth would we need to store 18TWh for a week or two?
18 TWh is the Irish demand for 6 months. Are you saying that we will not be generating any wind or solar for 26 weeks at a time? It seems you are throwing out figures, without any fundamental understanding of the issue. As to the cost, well, how much would Nuclear power be? A plant would be 20 years in the making and cost at least €40 billion if not close to €100 Billion. For €50 Billion you can buy a lot of BESS, Interconnectors, and offshore wind Poland bought 14GWh for €1 Billion
The Ireland/France Interconnector 700MW was €1.6 Billion The 2GW of offshore in the Irish Sea is projected to cost about anything from €3.6 Bilion to €6 Billion. For €10 Billion, you could fix 75% of our issues, with Wind, BESS and more Interconnectors… For about 1/10th of the cost of Nuclear.
18 TWh that’s how much gas was burned last year 2025 because there was no renewables to fill the demand just like most of this week so far since our 8-9GW of wind and solar doesn’t like to work much
“The Ireland/France Interconnector 700MW was €1.6 Billion”
The Celtic interconnector is not complete nor live so yet again you are posting factually wrong information “As of April 2026, the project is on track to begin full operation within the year.” Thats after being delayed for years past original completion date
You max that out every hour of every day paying for and importing French nuclear power and you still only fill in 5-6TWh of that gas hole, it may come as a shock to someone who didn’t know we had an all island grid but inter-connectors don’t generate electricity they just move it, but you are not gonna max it out as that means on windy days wind generators don’t get paid. So you are back to needing tons of storage!
I noticed you keep avoiding doing any math about battery or hydro storage for the required amount while always demanding figures which I keep providing, so far the conversation is very one sided despite your bizzare rudeness
Perhaps building several interconnectors and outsourcing production to nuclear France is the answer, wouldn’t that be funny
“Poland bought 14GWh for €1 Billion”
source for this? And rest of your post? The amounts and figures for Poland from December (approved by eu last month) through 2030 are quite different than your claim
2GW of offshore wind in the Irish sea would generate about 7TWh - 8.8TWh of energy
3GW would generate 10.5TWh -13.1TWh That is a big chunk off the 18TWh that we use for Gas.
How much is Nuclear expected to cost us? For a guy with all the 'facts and figures' you sure seem secretive about it. Its as plain as day that we know that Nuclear has huge up front capex cost, but you are too scared to admit this, so instead your shitck is to down play the possibility of renewable as part of the overall solution. You have not said one thing positive about it. Says it all.
… if the wind is blowing, and when the wind is blowing there’s already plenty of wind on land, you are back to needing storage when renewables are taking a nap
We didn’t burn that 18TWh of gas for laugh, we had no choice as the 8-9GW of renewables were vacationing
Did you find em figures for Poland? Or just keep posting more lies and wrong figures
Having 5 reactors de-rated to 4 reactors worth of power means nuclear will cost 20% more.
UK nuclear last year. maximum: 5.31 GW average: 3.897 GW October was 2.51GW German nuclear was similar.
N+1 is wishful thinking because as I keep pointing out having half of a nuclear fleet offline isn't exactly rare. Outages lasting months or years are also a thing.
And N is a much smaller number until the final reactor goes online. At 18 months per subsequent reactor it's going to take SIX years of supporting a smaller number of nuclear plants.
RAID 5 is a way of providing redundancy for hard drives. The scariest time is not when one drive goes offline, but when it's rebuilding the array. All the other drives are now working flat out however, they are usually of the same type and same age so may fail around the same time. Having N+1 redundancy with nuclear plants would be similar.
And you have no plan to keep the lights on for the next 20 years.
You do realise that offshore wind is stronger than onshore, right? Around 20-40% more wind, right? You do know this, right? Because if you did, you wouldn't have asked the above question.
I hear inter-connectors are the answer then
Or mystery Polish batteries can’t get a source for and wildly different to recent Polish government website statements
they used to teach kids in school that something multiplied by zero or very small number is still zero or a very small number
You still have half the capacity factor of nuclear and a third the lifespan, so your wind cost is 3x over same lifespan as nuclear and of course ??? Cost for storage if we are serious about dropping gas
"Coincidentally this is the amount two AP1000 reactors output in a year at 92% capacity factor"
So seeing as how they are US reactors and the US has the most reactors we should follow their lead , should we go the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station route or the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant for those pair of AP1000's ??
Vogtle 3 & 4 were seven years late and the cost 2.4 times what they were supposed to > $35Bn. Most expensive nuclear plant until Hinkley-C said "hold my beer" And they aren't running at 92% because unrealistic claims are constantly made for nuclear.
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/vogtle-3 2024 uptime 81% 7127 hours.
And when you dig deeper it's worse :
https://www.nukeworker.com/outages/unit/vogtle-3/ Look at the durations of the unscheduleds or SCRAMs and then at right most column - Days Online. That's serious backup needed.
https://www.nukeworker.com/outages/unit/vogtle-4/ it shows how nuclear reactors need a lot of backup during their first years, also why the drops ??
Scheduled 2023-08-21 2024-02-22 186 Half a year offline ?
The Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station was abandoned, at great financial cost.
hey used to teach kids in school that something multiplied by zero or very small number is still zero or a very small numberYou still have half the capacity factor of nuclear and a third the lifespan, so your wind cost is 3x over same lifespan as nuclear and of course ??? Cost for storage if we are serious about dropping gas
hey used to teach kids in school that something multiplied by zero or very small number is still zero or a very small number
We have gone through this already. It seems you hit a reset button and start regurgitating all the same bullshit false arguments again.
We could clear this all up if you tell me how much a nuclear power plant would cost to build in Ireland. You simply will not put your cards on the table. Too insecure in yourself and your argument to give us the details on that, and it shows a mile off. Instead your focus is on knocking renewable, in the hope that expensive nuclear is the default winner.
A lot of the time when we burn gas, the wind is blowing just not strongly enough for the capacity we have. If we had more capacity we would need less gas. For what you are saying to be true, there would have to be days where 0% of our energy was produced by renewables. And there are not any of those.
Do you believe there is slave labour used in South Korea?
Great - this will really make us feel good about our Data centre policies won't it…. just got to find lots more gas to keep the Greenwashing of this nonsense going🙄
South Korea is not the EU or Ireland. Very different jurisdictions.
Exactly. Korea is improving, their work practices and health & safety wouldn't be up to European standards. There staff might earn on par with German workers but work 70 hours per week.
And of course the scandal that saw Korean people jailed and their international reputation ruined.
Other than than those minor details that would make building their design in Ireland double the cost of in their native Korea, they're alright.
Have you found them figures you invented for Poland for storage? Because I’m looking at completely different article with different figures of Polish government website for storage through 2030
you can have (pick random large number of wind) 100GW of wind in this country on land and offshore and still produce next to zero on a “breezy” day or week
That people can’t do basic math or understand how renewable capacities work (or that we have a single all Ireland grid) or pull figures out of their rear and run away when challenged is shocking
And even when it’s windy you are still burning gas
Today is a fairly windy day across the island AND still we are burning gas while half of the installed wind does nothing
90g co2 right now for Irleand as opposed to 14 for nuclear France
Wind across the island today is in the optimal 13 to 24km/h range! And still still we need to burn gas
Still double offshore wind and 8-9x solar when it comes to capacity factors
You can’t be dismissing wind and solar capacity factors out of one side of your mouth while trying to dismiss nuclear out of the other side which as per your own figures does much much better
Simple question, how about answering it instead of deflecting with nonsense.
Ill give you the link, once you show me the business case and costs for providing Nuclear in Ireland.
Its a strawman argument.
The UK doesn't use slave labour and its Hinkley expansion is expected to cost at least €60 Billion.
With this shite again. Stop peddling disinformation and fake news.
I have a question for @cnocbui and @bored65 and the response will indicte if you are actually engaging in this debate honestly. Does renewables, like Wind or Solar have any place in Ireland energy makeup. Should we not for example, continue with rooftop solar installation, is it that a scam. We should not a put a cent more into wind, especially offshore wind.
Go look at Eirgrid smart dashboard for this week I even posted screenshots to highlight the issues, today is very interesting, we should be getting 100% from wind as conditions are ideal and we are not, I suspect eirgird (whom removed the predicted wind production line from their reports) screwed up their predictions for today or there is some sort of cartel like agreement by producers bidding on the auction to keep prices high by burning gas when there is no need
did you find them figures for storage in Poland you have invented and do not match real world reporting by Polish government
I’ve no issues with rooftop solar, I literally have it on my own roof, by all means put it on every roof in the country if people want to spend their own money (the grants are a scam tho, as installers just increase their fees but that amount)! on the other hand I have a major issue with agricultural fields being taken out of food production and converted to industrial parks for solar and storage estates full of metal, plastic, high fences and flammable container batteries where you had green fields before
I first hand understand what 10% capacity over a year (heavily dependent on daytime, cloud cover and month of year) without storage entails which is why I keep nudging you to do some basic math, but for bizzare reason you keep being rude and not debating in good faith
"We should be getting 100% from wind". You know we're limited by a 75% SNSP on the grid at the moment. Everyone is aware of that. Everyone is aware that Eirgrid via synchronous condensors are trying to increase that. This 75% is a limit at the moment but will increase in coming years.
So why say "should be getting 100% from wind"?
So adding more wind won’t reduce the amount of gas needed, thanks for confirmation
cc @markodaly
Add the cost of synchronous condensers to the cost of 37GW offshore + 10GW onshore wind and solar + ??? Storage + ??? Interconnectors + ??? Hydrogen + ??? Gas burned until above are ready by 2050 on current trajectory we are being taken down
Won't reduce it on days where renewables are hitting the 75% limit. But those days are rare, maybe 2-3 per month. So it can reduce it on other days and also will be needed when the SNSP is increased.
If it’s not windy right across the island as often happens then how does adding more wind help? Your peaks can get higher (if not artificially limited) but troughs don’t lift at all
Still requiring gas or uber expensive storage
If you have a 3L diesel engine it would still be as much stuck on the side of the road as 2L engine if there is no diesel in the tank
Here's a day/scenario where I think having offshore wind turbines in the Irish Sea would reduce the amount of gas needed. I expect that on a day like that, we will only be getting 10-20% of generation from our onshore wind. We would still need some gas, but less.
It's a forecasted day for Wed 29th https://windy.app/spots/Ireland so is not exact. How accurate it is I don't know.
There will be other days like next Monday where there won't even be any offshore wind. And those days having the extra wind turbines will contribute nothing. But I don't want perfect to be the enemy of good.
At least in April, days like the above come with a bit of sunshine
and increasing solar will also reduce our daytime gas consumption. We don't have any means of storage so gas will have to be burned when the sun isn't shining.
Days like the above, Nov-Feb, will require mostly gas to power the grid for now. I don't think anyone is disputing that.
Terrible day for offshore wind in Ireland
Not worth my time engaging further since you keep deflecting from answering a very simple question.
Synchronous condensers do not generate electricity, they consume it. The only way you will get a guaranteed supply of electricity from wind generation is by installing enough capacity to cover for when wind is as low as 6% capacity for those long extended periods.
We presently have 5 GW installed onshore wind, 1.3GW of solar farms installed capacity and ~240MW of hydro. All three are supplying at most 1.75 GW. Our projected peak demand is for ~15.5 GW by 2050. To reach that 15.5 GWs would require a further 13.75 GW generation from offshore wind. The installed capacity required to ensure it covers for those prolonged periods of little or no wind is not just financially unfeasible it`s insane.
