Discussion on Spirit of Ireland Proposal

Nonmonotonic · 07-05-2009 7:59pm #1

Interesting.

Downloads a Word document (maybe I should have cut & paste!).

Cheeble · 07-05-2009 8:36pm

What's your point?

Cheeble-eers

MayoForSam · 07-05-2009 9:25pm

Eddie Hobbs was on the radio this morning and mentioned this idea, sounded like he was looking for investors. The idea does have some merit - not too many other countries have the topography to do this - Norway maybe but they have their oil reserves.

Sounds a bit too good to be true, I am sure the planning process in this country will hold things up for years anyway. Plenty of NIMBY's would have a canary if someone suggested flooding the local valleys with sea water.

Proof-of-concept would be required at the very least. Why can't we be pro-active in this area like the Danes were 20 years ago with pure wind? Dream on....

lostexpectation · 08-05-2009 4:51am

get steorn feeling off these guys

loyatemu · 08-05-2009 9:41am

lostexpectation wrote: »

get steorn feeling off these guys

hardly the same thing - I don't know whether what they're proposing is feasible on such a large scale, but we do alreay have wind-farms and pumped storage hydro plants in this country so the basic concepts are already proven.

djpbarry · 08-05-2009 12:06pm

Cheeble wrote: »

What's your point?

Indeed. OP, please provide something more than a link to a document when starting a thread, as per the charter.

InvisibleBadger · 08-05-2009 12:30pm

A few more specifics would be nice. What valleys do they propose to flood and so on. Does seem a bit too good to be true, but if it is, i would like to see it happen.

slagger · 08-05-2009 3:05pm

MayoForSam wrote: »

Eddie Hobbs was on the radio this morning and mentioned this idea, sounded like he was looking for investors. The idea does have some merit - not too many other countries have the topography to do this - Norway maybe but they have their oil reserves.

Sounds a bit too good to be true, I am sure the planning process in this country will hold things up for years anyway. Plenty of NIMBY's would have a canary if someone suggested flooding the local valleys with sea water.

Proof-of-concept would be required at the very least. Why can't we be pro-active in this area like the Danes were 20 years ago with pure wind? Dream on....

I wonder who'll be the firsts nimby's in the queue. The Greens, maybe?

http://www.adrianramsay.org.uk/blog/not-all-renewable-energy-projects-are-green.html

http://www.nce.co.uk/the-severn-barrage-calling-greens-bluff/1967356.article

mike65 · 08-05-2009 3:08pm

Pat Kennys radio programme gave this a fair wind on yesterdays programme (should be podcastable from www.rte.ie/radio1 ), it sounds like "the anwser" on the face of it, but would require quite a bit of upgrading the grid I belive.

mike65 · 10-05-2009 12:08am

Interviews with the men behind this.

http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-rte-todaywithpatkenny-Thursday.smil

mike0001 · 12-05-2009 10:20pm

Steorn.com II The sequel !

Remember that lotto ad: green hippy in the grass, "I'd buy a cloud for water...yea"

Play lotto or it could be her!

sliabh · 13-05-2009 12:11am

They quote a 3,000 MW capacity, and a requirement for 1% of Irish land area. I did some calculations on this using formulae from David MacKay's (free) book "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air". I took an average 7m/s wind speed (from Met Eireann) and a generous 35% load factor (from the Irish Wind Energy Association).

The results come out that you can generate that sort of power, but only with enough wind farms to cover 2,500 square kilometers of land, or about 3.5% of the land area of the republic. So at least one of their numbers is BS.

To put that in perspective, all of country Limerick is 2,686 square kilometers, and today only 1.9% of the country's land area is classed as "artificial". The scale of the project you are talking about here is beyond colossal.

I didn't get around to looking into their pumped storage claims, but this already looks like fantasy to me.

And that is before you start asking whether we should trash the entire western seaboard, the most rugged beautiful part of this country, with this questionable scheme.

lostinsuperfunk · 15-05-2009 7:29pm

I get a much lower area figure of 750 km2 (still quite a lot though!):

3000 MW will require (say) 3000 x 3 MW turbines running at 33 % capacity.
These turbines have, say, a 100 m rotor diameter. Using the 5 x rotor diameter turbine separation rule of thumb you get an inter-turbine separation of 0.5 km, so there is one turbine in each 0.5 km x 0.5 km area, i.e. one turbine per 0.25 km2.

By this measure, 3000 turbines will occupy 3000*0.25 = 750 km2.

There are massive assumptions here. In particular I'm not sure about how the 5 x d thing scales for such large, high turbines.

In any case, the actual turbine footprint is much smaller than the area of the wind farm. Only a tiny proportion of the areas of the wind farms would become artificial.

Shiny · 21-05-2009 9:56am

I love their idea but what were they thinking with the name.

I thought it was a religious scam until I went to their website
the other day.

diverdriver · 26-05-2009 2:09pm

It is pure fantasy. The investment required is massive. The Engineering required is massive. Whether it's 750 Km2 or 2500 Km2, the scale of wind farm coverage is enormous. We would be up to our ears in wind turbines. It's bad enough now in certain areas. The final killer is the idea of flooding valleys in the west of Ireland to produce hydroelectric power with sea water no less! I for one would object to that never mind the what the locals think of it.

But even if it was a runner. Where are we going to get the money for it? It simply will not happen. All credit to them for thinking big. But we might as well be trying to organise the first Irish space mission to put solar panels in orbit.

sliabh · 26-05-2009 2:33pm

Hi lostinsuperfunk,

It is good to see someone else going into the numbers with this, because SoI seem to be very reluctant to provide theirs.

I think the reason for the discrepencey in our answers is that the power rating for a wind turbine (e.g. 3.6MW for the 128m ones on the Arklow bank) is based on the maximum output, rather than the average. This is usually calculated around a 15m/s wind speed which is the optimum.

So while 3000 100m turbines could generate enough power for the country, most of the time they won't, and additional units will be required.

Hoagy · 26-05-2009 4:06pm

There was a good letter in the Independent a while ago which also poured salt water on the idea.

The proposal is obviously very simplistic and very impractical; to say that it could be achieved in five years is mind boggling. While we are right to consider sustainable sources, renewables alone will not solve our energy problems.

lostinsuperfunk · 26-05-2009 5:09pm

Hi Sliabh,
The 33% capacity factor takes into account the fact that the turbines spend a lot of their time running at below maximum rated output, or not running at all.

3000 x 3 MW turbines will have a maximum output of 9000 MW. Apply the 33% capacity factor and they produce, on average over a period of a year or longer, 33 % of their peak output, or 3000 MW.

Re: the letter in the Indo, Prof. Walton could be accused of being very selective with his figures. He bases his calculations on the peak energy demand of 5000 MW, but this is only sustained for short periods of time. He is a known proponent of nuclear power, which I have no problem with, but he may have an agenda. I think he is missing the point here : nuclear power alone cannot meet our energy needs. Neither can wind. But the idea of large scale storage would be a big enabler for either nuclear or wind generation (or both), and interconnectors can help too.

The area figures are a bit misleading when quoted this way. If you build a big wind farm you have to space the turbines out so that the wake of one turbine doesn't affect other turbines downwind. If we allowed our 3000 turbines a generous base area of 20 m X 20 m each, they would occupy an area on the ground of 1.2 sq. km, although they would be spread out over a much larger area.

sliabh · 04-06-2009 10:42pm

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

Hi Sliabh,
The 33% capacity factor takes into account the fact that the turbines spend a lot of their time running at below maximum rated output, or not running at all.

I stand corrected, I found I double counted the load factor in my calcs.

But while the actual ground space under the turbines may only be 1.2km^2 you will still need to account for the huge are the farms take up as pretty much no one will want to be living under or right beside them. So there will still be a struggle to find the land for all of these.

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

Re: the letter in the Indo, Prof. Walton could be accused of being very selective with his figures. He bases his calculations on the peak energy demand of 5000 MW, but this is only sustained for short periods of time.

True, but it is a demand that has to be met. And the extra capacity would probably be needed to fill the storage system in off peak times anyway.

Oldtree · 03-07-2009 7:02pm

The idea is relatively simple. Spirit of Ireland says that energy generated from wind farms can meet some, but not all, of the country's needs. However, wind energy could be used at off-peak times to pump water from the sea into reservoirs created from valleys on the west coast.

quoted from the newspaper article here:

http://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.net/paperstoday/index.php?do=paperstoday&action=view&id=13240

See spirit of Ireland website here:

http://www.spiritofireland.org/

The last time I ranted on about aspects of this, the wind company wanted to dig the insides of the mountains out and site turbines in SAC's, and now this chap has a brigher idea and cheaper too no doubt. I kind of like the valleys as they are.

My one question is: how many valleys would it take to supply the required electricity needs at a commercially viable price?

nayorleck114 · 03-07-2009 7:16pm

I was thinking of the Lough Easkey area of Co. Sligo.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwallace/143651792/

Problem is than you are always going to have some oposition to any site. Then you will have Rossport eco nerds camping and protesting.

Anyway there are lots of valleys, you just need to make sure its one with few N.I.M.B.Y's.

zod · 03-07-2009 7:20pm

better we flood one or two valleys here before climate change floods all of them.

If you don't believe that, then read "The end of oil" because oil is going to 200 dollar a barrel, and we as one of the worlds most heavily dependent nations on oil are going to wish we did something while we could still raise the cash.

Oldtree · 03-07-2009 8:24pm

would one or two valleys do it?

Shiny · 03-07-2009 8:33pm

If you want information their Presentation at the Engineers Ireland HQ
has probably been the most comprehensive so far.

Videos on Engineers Ireland here. (Everything on June 23rd)

Discussion about it on SOI forums here.

As one of the engineers at that presentation, I was quite impressed but
a lot of people are very cynical about the whole thing. Hopefully it will
be all cleared up when they release their updated proposal in September.

They have quite a simple solution for the N.I.M.B.Y's. They have identified
about 50 suitably valleys along the west coast from Kerry up to Donegal.
If there is a lot of opposition for a site they will simply choose a different
one.

Edit:
Two large valleys would probably do it and by doing it I mean supply electricity
for several days when there is no wind blowing.

gpjordanf1 · 03-07-2009 8:43pm

Shiny wrote: »

If you want information their Presentation at the Engineers Ireland HQ
has probably been the most comprehensive so far.

Videos on Engineers Ireland here. (Everything on June 23rd)

Discussion about it on SOI forums here.

As one of the engineers at that presentation, I was quite impressed but
a lot of people are very cynical about the whole thing. Hopefully it will
be all cleared up when they release their updated proposal in September.

They have quite a simple solution for the They have identified
about 50 suitably valleys along the west coast from Kerry up to Donegal.
If there is a lot of opposition for a site they will simply choose a different
one.

Edit:
Two large valleys would probably do it and by doing it I mean supply electricity
for several days when there is no wind blowing.

Its not the N.I.M.B.Y's. i'm worried about, it's An Taisce they will do everything in their power to stop it!

I really am in favour of this but we really need to start this project now!!

Shiny · 03-07-2009 8:46pm

gpjordanf1 wrote: »

Its not the N.I.M.B.Y's. i'm worried about, it's An Taisce they will do everything in their power to stop it!

I really am in favour of this but we really need to start this project now!!

I think they would be more opposed to the 4000 or so wind turbines
that need to be built to fill the lakes.

There seems to be far less opposition to the storage element of the proposal which
I think is by far the most important.

djpbarry · 03-07-2009 8:54pm

Threads merged.

I've edited the title to make it a bit more general.

gpjordanf1 · 03-07-2009 9:15pm

Shiny wrote: »

I think they would be more opposed to the 4000 or so wind turbines
that need to be built to fill the lakes.

There seems to be far less opposition to the storage element of the proposal which
I think is by far the most important.

Where did you get 4,000 from?

Having re-read the merged thread (correct me if i'm wrong) but people seem to be calculating the energy requirements of the country based on Wind Farms, where in fact they are only using wind to pump water to fill and top up reserivors, which I would imagine wouldn't need that much wind turbines?

Shiny · 03-07-2009 9:24pm

I didn't get that number from the thread but I will have a look to
see where I got it from.

Igor, mentions 2000-3000 here but I'm almost certain I read
that the number would be closer to 4000.

This number would be in addition to existing wind farms including those at Gate 3.

Their plan seems to be that these turbines do nothing other than constantly top up the
storage lakes. Many of these wind farms would be owned by local Co-Ops who would sell
their electricity to SOI (or whatever entity) for a lower (than current wind farm) price but
with the guarantee that they will never have to curtail their output. It hasn't happened yet (in ireland)
but as the installed wind capacity exceeds 15% we will start to hear about it more and more.

gpjordanf1 · 03-07-2009 9:29pm

Shiny wrote: »

I didn't get that number from the thread but I will have a look to
see where I got it from.

Igor, mentions 2000-3000 here but I'm almost certain I read
that the number would be closer to 4000.

This number would be in addition to existing wind farms including those at Gate 3

Having a look at their site again, wind power will only be used for pumping of water and not connection to the grid, Hydro only connected to the grid, so again I cant see how that many would be required?

zod · 03-07-2009 9:31pm

Shiny wrote: »

This number would be in addition to existing wind farms including those at Gate 3.

good. the more the better

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