Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
IRELAND SET TWO new records for electricity demand during the cold snap.
The end of the current cold snap is well in sight, with a rise in temperatures forecast over the weekend and that last of the Status Orange low temperature and ice warnings ending earlier today.
Levels of demand on the power system reached a record high during a cold spell last November, but this was twice surpassed this week.
A Megawatt (MW) is the standard term of measurement for bulk electricity and at 5.53pm on Tuesday 7 January, a demand peak of 5,716 Megawatts was recorded.
Just over a day later, this record was bested, with 6,024 MW recorded at 5.47pm on Wednesday, 8 January.
The record set on Wednesday was of particular significance as it was the first time that peak electricity demand passed the 6,000 MW mark.
Demand first passed the 5,000 MW mark during the extreme cold snap of December 2010, a record which stood for a decade before being surpassed in December 2020 and on a number of subsequent occasions, including twice this week.
When the record was broken on Wednesday, around 60% of electricity generation was coming from gas and 17% from renewables.
Meanwhile, the beginning of the cold snap last weekend also saw new demand peaks set for a Saturday (5287 MW on 4 January) and for a Sunday (5,134 MW on 5 January).
EirGrid, which operates the electricity grid in Ireland, noted that electricity demand in the winter is heavily influenced by weather conditions.
Its analysis of Ireland’s peak demand over winter indicates that a 1°C decrease in outside temperature results in a 40 MW increase in peak demand.
Diarmaid Gillespie, Director of System Operations at EirGrid, remarked that Control Centre staff were able to rely on a mix of generation options over the course of the week to ensure demand was met.
“Since seeing the demand peak from the winter of 2010 passed in late 2020, we’ve seen a series of new demand records being set over the last four years, with peak demand rising by almost 900 MW in this space of time,” said Gillespie.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
For as long as we don’t have control of our currencys value and hang our economic performance solely on exports instead of growing our domestic economy, we will only ever know ‘uncertainty’.
The sad reality of the system is werejammin that any export performance is devoured by our debts owed due to bonds, bailouts and guarantee schemes.
The countries citizens, politicians, civil servants (and economists from what I hear them advise), are completely ignorant of the rules of the money game. We are being cleaned out at the poker table.
Back to Basics once again. If you think going back to the markets is a good thing, contact your local psychiatrist immediately. Going back to the markets is selling bonds – literally increasing our bondage – to bankers. It is getting into even more debt and paying back bankers in chunks of our countries real physical assets – infrastructure, water systems, airports, oil and gas etc.
The public demand their free “entitlements”, politicians will not say no. The borrowing continues. Our debt spirals.
There’s nothing good about piling up borrowing, getting deeper in debt. The whole monetary system is a racket, and at this stage none of the worlds public debt can ever be paid back.
have your say