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WIND ENERGY HAS provided 34% of Ireland’s energy so far this year, on the back of record figures in recent months, a new report shows.
The latest figures from Wind Energy Ireland found it accounted for 21% of all of the country’s power last month.
July saw a two-fold increase in demand met by wind compared with the same period last year.
Wind Energy Ireland chief executive Noel Cunniffe said the figures show it plays a “crucial” role in shielding customers from rising energy prices, even in months when the wind energy output is lower.
“While figures in July are lower than previous months, this is in line with seasonal expectations,” he said.
Wind Energy Ireland / TwitterGovernment's increased ambition of 7GW of offshore wind by end of 2030 is very welcome. Offshore wind and green hydrogen can be at the heart of energy an independent Ireland. Let's reform/properly resource our planning system to make this happen.
— Wind Energy Ireland (@WindEnergyIRL) July 29, 2022
Read: https://t.co/ba5E6cMzPQ
He said that “what is heartening to see is that wind energy met twice as much of the electricity demand this July as in July 2021, which is a significant increase”.
“Figures also show that even in months with lower output, wind energy still plays a crucial role in shielding customers from the worst of the fossil fuel-driven increases in wholesale electricity prices.”
Cunniffe said that while wholesale electricity prices rose significantly in the past month due to high fossil fuel costs, despite lower levels of wind generation there was still almost €40 in the difference between the cost per MWh on the windiest and least windy days – €256.66 and €295.58 respectively.
The average price for MWh per month was €267.19.
The latest data comes in the wake of a Government announcement last week that offshore wind generation targets will increase from five gigawatts to seven gigawatts per year by 2030 in a bid to meet climate change targets.
Cunniffe welcomed the increased targets but warned that the planning system needs to be urgently reformed to ensure projects are built quickly.
He said: “Our members have a project pipeline that is significantly bigger than 7GW. We have the investment, the skills and the expertise to respond to this call to action from the Government.
“However, in order to meet these targets, our planning system must be urgently reformed and properly resourced to ensure that the renewable energy projects needed to cut our carbon emissions and drive down electricity bills can get built as quickly as possible.”
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Yet the price gouging continues.
@Peter McGlynn: what better way to protect ourselves against price gouging, in the future, then produce all our own energy? That way we will be separated from international price fluctuations, caused by international events.
@Tomás Barrett: Agreed, lets nationalise our country’s energy. We can start by taking back what was gifted to Royal Dutch Shell. But then again, the integrity of our political class is nowhere near that of Norway’s.
@Special_Ed: contact Sun arc solar systems to produce your own electricity… Our Electricity bills have more than halved since we got our system in..
@Special_Ed: that would only be a short term fix. Even at that, the price would fluctuate along with international prices.
@Tomás Barrett: I couldn’t agree with you more. Cannot wait to close some windows on the roof so that I can have some solar panels installed. All going well, will also put 1 or 2 small wind turbines in the garden and be mostly off the grid :D
There are a lot of cynical comments here on pricing and alternatives. Fair enough I suppose but let’s take the positives. The number is going in the right direction. Now let’s start putting them off shore and creating more diversity in the energy network.
More propaganda from the wind industry. Derry brien and meenbog landslides anyone. Still using fossil fuel as back up and why is there a temporary gas power plant being built in dublin? Intermittent power source at best.
@fergusob: Yes it is an intermittent power source but the fact remains that when the wind is blowing less has is being burnt. It’s only one part of the solution though
@Mickety Dee: *gas
@fergusob: intermittent, yes, but what the fossil fuel propaganda machine doesn’t want to acknowledge is the myriad of ways that intermittency is addressable. For instance we will shortly have an interconnect to the European grid via France.
@fergusob: two power generation plants.. one at North Wall and the other at Tyrellstown…
@Deirdre O’Byrne: Yeah, a connection to the European grid. So we’ll never have a sustainable power source of our own, we will rely on everyone else. You are the “propaganda machine” ye sap.
@fergusob: Pump Storage Hydro Stations get over that problem. Old and reliable technology.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: Really? Then why has the Irish government (I.e. local County Councils) blocked scores of planning requests along the west coast for hydro stations? Jaysus, your igńorançe is startling lad.
@Alan Wright: actually Ireland has one of the windiest climates in the world, so we will probably (hopefully) be exporting more than importing through the interconnect ya sap.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: “Probably”, “hopefully”! Wow, real science there mate. In the future, yes and maybe. But we need to think of today, but you want to doom us back to the stone-age.
@Alan Wright: I’m pro-nuclear, pro-wind, pro-storage, and yet I “want to bring us to the stone age”?! What?! I don’t know where this constant need to (attempt to) criticise me comes from, but know this – I don’t give a toss what you think of me, because it says far more about you than about me.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: There are times, most years, when it is cloudy and still over most of Europe for several days. There is nothing like enough energy storage to cover that.
Genuine question, is that power generated or power consumed? Two totally different metrics. Either way it seems as if prices are still entirely dependent on fossil fuels.
@Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri: when you generate power, you either immediately consume it, or you store it in a battery or at Poulaphouca or whatever. And if you don’t need it you don’t generate it (e.g. by putting the brakes on the wind turbines) – otherwise you have a potentially dangerous condition of having to somehow dump large quantities of energy.
@Alan Wright: Wrong. Pump Storage Hydro Stations store all energy generated in a potential kinetic form. Old technology. Works fabulously. Check out Turlough Hill. And stop accusing people of lying.
@Alan Wright: I never said ‘battery’!! You use the electricity generated to pump water into a reservoir. When wind levels drop that reservoir can be a source of hydro power. Stored as potential kinetic and used to generate electricity.
@Alan Wright: there are grid scale battery banks in California and Australia. And pumped hydro is grid scale energy storage with decades of use behind it. Good grief what’s with the personal attacks? Did I trigger you or something?
@Alan Wright:??? Where did I say ‘battery.?
@Alan Wright: On fire today Alan .. calling people ignorant and saps, and on the China/Taiwan article calling someone a mor0n – only to find you had to back peddle when you didn’t comprehend their post correctly (oh the irony). Go for a walk in the countryside and chill out dude.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: the grid scale battery bank in Australia provides 10 minutes of electricity. Its a peaker.
@Gavin Tobin: source?????
@Gavin Tobin: Lithium batteries are usually used on the minutes to small number of hours timescales. The flow battery makers are targeting longer periods but still not days for now at least until the hours market gets less hungry
To go completely sustainable we need many terawatt hours of zero self discharge storage which will take some time to build. .
No mention here of tidal power. Simpler and more efficient.
@Nick Caffrey: the only constant we have is the tide, don’t know how we havnt tried harnessing it
@John Power: Its been tried, but the issues is that its twice to nine times as expensive than wind, more damaging to the marine environment, and the sea is very unforgiving to anything submerged in it for long periods.
Those issues are still being worked on, but the fact that the start up costs are so high, its difficult to get funding. There are also not a lot of proper coastal locations.
A massive achievement, but not one more screed of Planning should be given for more, until the magical means of filling the big intermittency gaps are well in place. The big white hope here is hydrogen and according to a recent DW review, this may be able to do 20% of the need by 2050, unfortunately far to late. Effectively they have morphed into vast subsidy harvesting schemes, all at massive expense to the consumer. And guess who now owns most of them – big oil.! A read of the link below is a must.!
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3548160-soaring-demand-for-electricity-and-coal-shows-why-we-need-nuclear-energy/
@Nicholas Grubb: the intermittency problem will ease with the Ireland-France interconnector, which will plug us into the European grid. It will also enable us to send excess to Europe when there’s a storm a-blowin’.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: Wind turbines have to stop when the wind is too high so storms aren’t great for electricity.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: Yes, by the time that’s in and connected at 700Mw, our load will be 7000Mw. Because we are in a similar climatic regime as Western France, they won’t need our wind power, having their own at the same time. The real reason for it is to bring in their nuclear power, but unfortunately with the Germans shutting down theirs and they both being interconnected, there will be none spare for us. Will just be one massive white elephant of cost, added to our already excessive bills. As for other’s above mention of pumped storage, batteries or whatever. Yes they will do a few hours, but we’re talking about weeks here.
@Nicholas Grubb: and who will end up owning that?
@Deirdre O’Byrne: We’ll be consuming nuclear energy then.
Maybe scrap the coal and just buy French nuclear
@Deirdre O’Byrne: So say you want “Nuclear Energy” without saying you want nuclear energy (in Ireland).
@Alan Wright: where did you get the idea I have a problem with nuclear power in Ireland? I mean, seriously, what’s your beef with me?
@Nicholas Grubb: it can, and often is, windy here when it’s calm in Europe. Check out https://globalwindatlas.info/
@Deirdre O’Byrne: France, if they have excess will most likely sell to Germany as they can outbid us. If we do end up buying over interconnectors we’ll be rode.
We need our own nuclear.
@Nicholas Grubb: I hope you are aware France is interconnected to the rest of Europe so that extra energy that Ireland could produce does not need to stop at France’s borders.
Also keep in mind France is quite a big country: while the North has a similar climate as Ireland, the centre, south or east are quite different and would have different needs.
The bottom line is that the interconnection is between Ireland and Europe, just happens to land in France as it is the closest point.
The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies—more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity
Technologically, that is amazing. Very impressive. Jeese….if we really tried we could reach 100%, if people and communities let up a bit. God knows we have the land and the wind. Over 1/3 of our energy needs met with wind power….come on! That’s a no brainer.
@Keth Warsaw: but we are still paying fossil fuel prices , why? I didn’t see a 37% reduction in my last electric bill
@j: Yes, agreed. The technology is impressive however. I’m actually betting on the French who are due to test their fusion ‘Mini Sun’ reactor in ’24.
Never needed it more. Any excess i guess can be sold easily to uk or europe so investment here could be much more than meeting irish needs.
Professor Donald Sadoway developed a battery storage solution over 20 years in order to store electrical energy generated by wind / solar etc. As he explains the Liquid Metal Battery is suitable for grid level storage. He outlines the reasons lithium ion batteries are unsuitable for grid level storage. He won inventor of the year from the EPO. This video i found very interesting and his company have been producing them for a few years already.
https://youtu.be/ZRyo0Nr7CrY
No matter how cheap sustainable energy is it will always be as expensive as it is now because the government needs tax income
Wind energy gets the high fossil fuel price. We are still using the same amount of fossil fuel as 10 years ago. What a scam wind energy is .
Interesting projects installation of electrolyzers (scroll down on link below). One of these to power 600 buses in a Chinese City – completed start 2022. They also built the re-filling stations. Two completed in Germany, 1 in train in Rotterdam and a huge one under planning in North Holland;
https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/hydrogen.html#
The headline is misleading because even if you generate 90% from wind the fossil fuel plant still run the same, still burn the same amount of fuel as before and in some cases even more because of inefficiencies. And the price must always be higher with more wind because of subsidies and hidden costs.
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