@David W: Thank you, that makes soooo much more sense!

@Mogh Roith: RTE is the name of the French Grid operator

Can’t wait to see reduced electricity prices in 2027 ;)

@Mogh Roith: Thought they had enough on with the Toy Show !

@Mogh Roith: I’d be more concerned why its costing us 65% and the French side only 35%

@Mogh Roith: RTE is the acronym (in french) for the French grid operator.

@Brendan Higgins: The disparity is because the French don’t need it. We do. The French have a surplus of electricity because of their network of nuclear plants. We have a shortfall – which is getting more acute.

@Kevin Simm: nuclear (the one that makes sense) is over €10bn.

We need to fill our seas with offshore windmills. We could be holding a World Cup in 20 years.

@Kevin Simm: TBH, a small nuclear plant would be the solution. But we can’t even build a few houses without everyone and their dog objecting.

@Stuart: or convert our gas burning power stations to burn hydrogen. There’s a supplier in Japan that manufacturers a Kit that fits inside the turbine so that could be done too. Not everything has to be wind powered. What a bout using solar to make hydrogen and then burn that?

@Colm O’Leary: And we get this hydrogen from where?

@Kevin Simm: If we build our own it will shortly thereafter be sold to a private company.

@John Kennedy: We could make it ourselves. You can even make hydrogen yourself on a smaller scale. Plenty of tutorials on the web.

@Brendan Rogers: A small nuclear plant would be the very worst solution. Nuclear is an indispensible component of a carbon-free European electricity future. But it only makes sense with big (1 GW + PWRs) units built next to existing nuclear sites with established technology in the countries with the established expertise, culture, regulatory and fuel infrastructure – within an integrated European grid.
SMEs (which is presumably what you are referring to) may have niche applications if the things ever see the light of day, but scattering small nuclear units across the continent seem a thoroughly silly idea for all sorts of reasons. Anyhow, none of these things have been built – less still debugged, and licensed with a licensed manufacturer, and its particular fuel infrastructure in place.

@John Kennedy: Electrolysing water to produce hydrogen is a highly inefficient use of electricity. It only makes sense if you have free generating over-capacity. In other words – surplus wind. But if you have the option of selling your surplus wind to France, the economic case becomes very dodgy. However, if we wish to replace gas (which is required not only for back-up in calm or stormy weather, but for grid-management) we may have to bite the economic bullet.

@Stuart: Minister Ryan’s projections for Ireland’s offshore wind capacity is grossly over-optimistic. His calculations seem to be based on putting these things along the entirety of the west coast. The reality is that there are few suitable stretches of this coast that will be suitable because of deep water close inshore and tourist amenity issues. And there is the question of securing large floating structures in deep water on a coast exposed to some of the worst weather on the planet. The North Atlantic winter can be awesome to behold. But not a place where floating wind-generators will have a long service life.

@Briain O’Shea: Where is this huge potential?, and why is it unrealized? at the moment our system demand is 4,246Mw and our 4200Mw of installed wind generation is producing 1,845mw

@John Kennedy: Our potential wind energy is offshore. Currently we produce over 40% of our electricity from onshore wind so it’s not entirely unrealised: this is one of the highest in the world. However, we will need more as our transport and heating sectors are increasingly powered by the grid. The potential for offshore wind is enormous – many times our current production.

@John Kennedy: Are you saying that we are producing 1845 mw of power but could be producing 4200 mw of power from wind?

@Roger Bond: If we were good at taking advantage of wind power, we wouldn’t be having the current energy crisis and massively increased Irish energy prices because of the global price of gas, because we would be energy independent, at least when the wind blows.

But we also need our own nuclear power capacity, to have 24/7/365 on demand base and peak power to augment our wind power, rather than creating a new external dependency.

@Bri Lyons: are you sure that France isn’t just very small, rather than far away?

@Roger Bond: That’s a private investment group. We already have one called the East-West Interconnector that is owned and managed by EirGrid.

@Belebopz: Eirgrid is fully owned by the Irish State. There are no plans to privatise it.