Spirit of Ireland propose Irish Energy Independence
Business Leadership report that a team of Irish engineers, academics, architects, geologists, hydro-geologists, environmental engineers, construction experts, consultants, and legal and finance professionals working on ideas proposed by Professor Igor Shvets of Trinity College have put together a plan for Irish energy independence. Ireland currently imports energy for 90% of her needs. The group hope to make Ireland energy independent within 5 years, after which they intend to export Irish energy to the rest of Europe. They plan to do this by harnessing Ireland’s natural wind power to drive large volumes of water uphill (wind power is notoriously volatile). The water can then be released at a steady rate to facilitate a constant rate of energy release. The project, while expensive, represents a €10bn stimulus for the national economy.
The Spirit of Ireland group
Eddie Hobbs on Spirit of IrelandOnce Ireland is self-reliant in energy terms after five years, the group then plans to create a massive export market for surplus Irish wind energy, which, it said, will result in energy exports from Ireland of up to €50bn over the following 10 years.
To do all this, the challenges presented in harvesting wind energy – its volatile nature as a fuel source, the costs involved capturing and delivering it a power network, the lack of storage capabilities to hold it – must be met through the creation of hydro storage reservoirs, the group said.
Such reservoirs operate on the principle of storing excess wind energy and providing more generation capacity when required. The Turlough Hill facility in the Wicklow Mountains offers a working example of this principle.
‘I always wondered ‘
‘if the surplus energy was used to pull a large weight (call it a massive concrete block) then it releases the energy again when need. could that work? ‘
Christ you are behind the times
The ancient Romans called this method catapulting . It was used for hurling large rocks against the walls of a besieged city and also I believe for launching plague ridden corpses over said walls to a new ‘resting’ place . Worked a treat .Cities usually surrendered immediately whenever the ‘dead ‘ were launched .
sorry missed that bit of history, how many kilowatts did they generate?
EH –
43.5 . Enough I’m told for 430 100 watt light bulbs but alas they had’nt been invented back then
?
greagoir.
That was very witty and funny that alternate history of Ireland, sadly there are a percentage in the north who actually believe that.
Hilarious.
“Dinorwig was a hugely expensive pumped storage facility which was basically mined out of the inside of a mountain. It cost £450m in 1974. It paid for itself in 10 years.”
Difference of course is it’s a storage not a generative facility. It uses nightime electicity to pump water up so that peak time demand can be pumped by releasing the water back down.This “costs” 25% in energy efficiency (i.e. it consumes 25% more energy in pumping water up than is generated by releasing it)
How the payback therefore..that’s easy – Lectric’s cheaper in the night.
Dewi,
Dinorwig is precisely the type of facility that Spirit of Ireland have in mind. The water would be pumped into the reservoir at times of excess wind and the pumped storage would be used when the wind can’t meet demand.
By this means every last watt of energy produced will make a difference. The economics of Dinorwig goes something like this. Wholesale electricity costs around 10 cent per kwh during the day and 2 cent during the night. Many oil, coal, gas and nuclear facilities run on a 24 hour basis because there are huge boiler efficiencies involved. Rather than sell the electricity during the night they can get, say, 7 cent for the same kwh during the day by using Dinorwig. It’s a no-brainer.
The thing about wind power is that the fuel is free. The obvious attraction is to put 10mw monster machines out to sea where the wind is stronger and they annoy nobody, and feed the power into the grid when capacity is available and into pumped storage at other times. It’s a very simple idea and all the technology is available.
The Spirit of Ireland group are talking about using sea pumped storage using the sea as the lower pool and an open reservoir for the upper pool so it would be much cheaper to build than Dinorwig. I’m not sure that these shoreline valleys will be easy to come by really. Let’s see what they propose.
what about those salt mines at carrick, would they be suitable for that sort of thing? just trying to think of anywhere up here that would suit that,
of course the other option is to convert the electric to hydrogen and pipe/ship it back, think that is in use in someplaces, added advantage there is it usueable for all sorts of fuel.
Greg
“[i]And thus, you have one of the greatest myths, one of the greatest fairytales that some naïve folk of Ulster are led to believe today, giving them a sense of importance and all courtesy of the likes of the UNIONIST historian A T Q Stewart etc…Are you one of the naïve too UMH?2[/i]
Green energy has went dead on this thread since yesterday, so i’ll give your Irish history a go.
I was meaning to buy Stewart’s ‘The Shape of Irish History’ as it’s something I don’t own. Would you suggest to avoid or purchase? (reasons please)
Greg,
I was reading an online extract of Stewart’s ‘The Shape of Irish History’ and regarding the 1845-7 famine it seems he’s quietly shy of the fact Catholic education practices fell below standard.
Steward blames the famine on an act of nature, and quite rightly so, but he doesn’t delve deep enough into the roles of the RC church and their priorities during that period.
Oliver Rafferty (a Jesuit) claims 20% of Catholics were illiterate in 1900 compared to 5% of Protestants, which proves Catholic education was poorer than Protestant.
Rafferty states, “Also many of the brighter pupils became priests and nuns and this undoubted drain on the talents of the community”
…but I say the Papal states was under financial pressure caused by the over spending of a lavish Pope and it had to recoup its looses, also it had to build an army of opposition against Napoleon.
…and I also say Peter’s pence (money paid by poor Irish catholics to their Priests for absolution) was given to Rome making the Irish Catholics poorer and poorer.
Ulsters my homeland –
Undoubtedly so. In the days before the welfare state, would you think harsh penal laws preventing Catholics from owning or acquiring property, high office etc. contributed to their relative poverty, at all?
The penal laws were long gone at the time of the famine as is evident by the large number of Catholics in the police force. The laws started to dissolve when the Papal States recognised the legitimatcy of James III to the throne.
The Catholic schooling system is primarily to blame for Catholics being less skilled and educated than Protestants. When the famine hit, it hit the poor who were mostly Catholics.
Ulsters my homeland –
Actually they weren’t fully repealed until 1869 – or 14 years after the famine ended. The effects of disenfranchisement would take a long time to work their way out – many generations. For the disenfranchised poor, survival was the priority! As the state did not provide education, that was a luxury for the well-off, whether Catholic or Protestant until after the Second World War.
Incidentally the potato blight struck across Europe, but it was only in the United Kingdom that it led to wide-spread death and emigration. In Catholic Ireland and Protestant Scotland (where 1.7 million were forced to emigrate).
Btw, in modern Northern Ireland Catholics outperform Protestants educationally, the south significantly outperforms the North.
UMH ,
‘The penal laws were long gone at the time of the famine as is evident by the large number of Catholics in the police force.’
The emancipation of Catholics in Ireland came about 60 years after the abolishing of slavery by the Commons . Although emancipation took place in 1829 the effects of the Penal Laws continued to sour relations between denominations well into the 20th century and even today no doubt in Northern Ireland . Changing an immoral law does not immediately change the mindset of those who contrived such laws in the first place nor does it change the minds of victims . Law is not the same thing as justice .
As for the large number of Catholics in the police force . It was physically demanding work -poorly paid , dangerous, and the police had very often to defend themselves personally and physically one on one against a people who did not think too highly of their role as defenders of the priviliged classes. A policeman who could not fight one to one would be considered an object of ridicule and his family would be shamed out of town !