Nice to see this amount of Wind generation.

Deleted User wrote: »

One thing I notice is that the coal generation mix always stays around 20%, the more wind that comes on line the more the gas is reduced but not the coal.

Simple. Coal cannot be ramped up and down quickly. Wind turbines, solar panels etc operate totally without control - they are literally as reliable the weather - so gas is the only fuel that can accompany renewables.

Deleted User wrote: »

I'd rather just pay for the Gas and eliminate coal altogether. We don't need it. They should be made eliminate coal.

There's just one problem with that. This is pretty much shilling for these guys.

Владимир Путин любит вас. Not really a good idea with the Russian Bear on the warpath. The other problem is that gas is very flexible (it can be used for electricity, transport, home heating and cooking, and is also a feedstock in certain chemical processes). So you have an opportunity cost. Waste gas in stationary power plants today (when you could use something like coal or uranium for the same purpose, the latter two having fewer oppotunity costs), your children and grandchildren won't be able to use that gas to heat their homes, because this generation wasted it instead of saving it.

Deleted User wrote: »

`+ the car companies in the E.U are lobbying regulators to allow for emissions levels for euro 6 to be higher than the current euro 5, imagine this ?

Maybe because the current standards increase dramatically the cost of running car (my car would probably cost twice as much to run if it were post Millenial) and as the VW scandal showed, even by loading up cars with €3000 DPFs that fail regularly, the standards are essentially unattainable.

There's also the little problem of Anthropogenic Climate Change, which we're supposed to believe is the greatest threat facing mankind in history, yet our boneheaded regulators, politicians and even more boneheaded electorates have no issue mandating that cars be 10-25% less fuel efficient than they should be (adding advanced pollution control devices also makes the whole system massively less fuel efficient), and also shutting down nuclear power plants to replace them with Mother Russia's gas and coal. And most of the people advocating this call themselves environmentalists! You couldn't make it up.

Edited to clarify: I am not disputing Antrophogenic Climate Change here. Rather, I am disputing the wisdom of making cars 1/10 to 1/4 less fuel efficient, or of closing nuclear plants (remember, France has 90%+ non-fossil elecrtricity), in the context of the expressed need for credible Anti-ACC policy.

Deleted User wrote:

Imagine we had Solar PV ? could help to greatly increase the peak supply during the day and wind take over at night.

Deleted User wrote:

But what would all the Gas stations do if we didn't need them as much ?

Yeah . But wind doesnt just blow during the night time does it , and you still need something flexible for when the wind's not blowing . Moneypoint's helpful as well to not have all our eggs in one basket so to speak .

Sure the petrol stations claim they make no money from fuel anyway . Drive in "corner shops" with a few fast charge points for good measure.

Macha wrote: »

That's exactly it - cheap coal imports from the US mean coal beats gas on the wholesale market. So when wind comes in and undercuts all of them, gas is the first to drop off the system.

Added to that, the EU emissions trading system which is supposed to put a price on carbon high enough to prevent this sort of thing from happening, isn't doing very well at the moment.

Our coal comes mainly from Columbia

ted1 wrote: »

So taking a price of 1million/MW we had 1.998billion euro of infrastructure sitting doing nothing

its nearer €2M so thats ~ €4B of idle infrastructure which has destroyed our country side in places, forced people from their homes due to noise impact and divided communities into those who make money out of wind and those who don't, added to the PSO levy forcing more people in to Fuel Poverty,

but most people still think wind is the only game in town for renewables due to the available subsidies.

Wind is actually an "imported" energy source if you look at where the profits for these wind farms go - some 75% plus are owned outside of Ireland so we pay externally for the benefit of having wind and the revenue is "exported" to pay for it

The comments on solar on this thread are reasonable but they do nothing to when the peak load is on the system (evening time in the winter) - they do make sense at a local level (in home) if smart devices can be programmed to use spare energy e.g. our dishwasher and washing machines are kicked off when there is excess supply from our 4kwp system thus saving us 18c per unit plus having zero transmission losses

Storage is an option but we need to be smarter about this - why do 80% of those who heat their water by electric wait until after 11pm to do so - because of the pricing structure - true fully flexible short time sliced smart meters could do a lot to balancing the load and "storing" energy at minimum costs.

Deleted User wrote: »

Pay foreign companies for fossil fuels or pay foreign companies to harness our wind and charge us, I think I prefer to pay for wind.

We promised cheaper bills at the start of all these wind turbine installations but it hasn't happened and this I am against.

At it won't because you now have to pay for two energy sources - wind and backup.

Wind costs €80/Mwh to purchase under the Irish subsidy scheme - but if you look at (www.sem-o.com) other sources can be purchased for around €35 - and wind (or rather renewable) must be used first if available. So if I spin up my gas plant and then more wind is available than predicted my plant wastes fuel and costs money on top of the €80 I am paying for wind.

PSO is now having such an impact on fuel bills that SVP is very concerned
https://www.svp.ie/getattachment/a145c1a9-4fbb-400d-b83f-2c6ee8d94c80/SVP-Submission-to-the-Dept-of-Communications,-Ener.aspx

fclauson wrote: »

has this been confirmed - 50% has been around for a long time

(SNSP = Systems non symmetric penetration) i.e. stuff which draws its frequency from the grid rather than provides it too the grid - anything inverter driven

It's a trial that is going on 75% is the long term goal.. We need 5 units on to keep inertia at above 20,000MW or the 50% limit still applies. EWIC counts towards SNSP so 500MW can be attributable to it

[Deleted User] wrote: »

So just burn more cheap coal then ? or Gas ?

We have to start somewhere.

I would like to see a lot more offshore wind farms but I bet this will only add tot he cost.

I would love to have seen more of the wind farms in the control of Irish companies or the Government.

We started some where but lost the run of ourselves. We have put 2 GW of wind in the grid. As a result prices have gone up and investment firms are making a great return.
We should have capped the about if wind to 1GW and then added Biomass/ PV/ pumped hydro/ etc

Wind is not the answer, why would the country run it. They are managed by a control centre in Denmark/ Germany. There's a small team involved in servicing them other than that there is noting to do once they are built

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Look at all the money sent to oil companies what's the difference ? at least wind energy is much cheaper.

I agree we should have a lot more much cheaper Solar PV.

Wind might be cheaper to convert but the price to the end consumer is higher.
So all that happens is the investors get rich.
We need to move away from new wind projects and develop other RES

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Someone's always going to get rich out of it otherwise no one will invest in anything.

We need not necessarily move away from wind but introduce other renewable sources particularly solar PV, Biomass ? depends where the fuel comes from, I'm not a fan of burning anything for fuel or heat.

Not sure hydro works in Ireland or pumped storage ?

When you allow for carbon sequestration biomass such as willow is carbon neutral when burnt.
How can we continue to add wind farms and other RES. There's a finite load on the grid. If wind makes up a large percentage you still need thermal plants to generate when the wind is down or when the wind is up are you going to curtail the biomass or other RES?

For pumped hydro we could hollow out a mountain or similar

Deleted User wrote: »

Absolutely not even close to burning our bogs, an environmental catastrophe.

You don't think driving bats to extinction would be a "catastrophe"? Because that's what the mainstream environmental left is advocating.