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Renewable Energy
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The introduction of smart metering later this year presents a great
opportunity to engage Irish people en masse into substantially reducing
their energy consumption, simply by showing them how much electricity
they’re consuming, and how much the cost varies at different times of
the day. However, as Richard Douthwaite
warns, there is a real risk that smart metering may come in a form that
benefits the electricity companies and not the end-user.
A remarkable change of attitude has taken place over the past few months within Ireland's electricity supply system. The evidence? It will soon be possible for almost anyone to sell small amounts of electricity to the grid at a reasonable price.
“In comparison with 18 months ago, it's quite easy now to get permission to connect a generator with up to 500kW capacity to the grid” says John Quinn of Surface Power Technologies in Mayo. This is a far cry from the situation in which the Camphill Community in Ballytobin, Co. Kilkenny, had to burn off surplus gas from its biogas digester for six years before it received permission to use the gas to power a generator and sell the electricity into the grid. “The Commission for Energy Regulation and the planning section of the Department of the Environment deserve a pat on the back for what they have achieved,” Quinn adds. “They've put us ahead of a lot of European countries.”
Although many potential combined heat and power (CHP) projects were stillborn in the past because the ESB would not take the power at a decent – or any – price, developers with suitable projects today should explore the possibilities again. Only those with plans for wind turbines over 500kW will still face difficulties. This is because so many people want to invest in wind farms that a 4,000MW queue has built up and applications are being processed in batches according to where the farms are to be sited and how long the application has been in. “Applications for 2,600MW have been in so long that the planning permissions for the wind farm sites will lapse shortly unless construction starts soon” says Peter Keavney of Galway Energy Agency, who is a council member of the Irish Wind Energy Association.
Even if some applications lapse because planning consents are not renewed, the backlog could last for many years because existing wind farms have enough capacity to meet over 40% of the country's needs in the middle of the night if the wind is blowing strongly and this forces the gas and coal-fired generators to cut their output.
In theory, that's just what should happen because it means that expensive fuel doesn't need to be used and greenhouse emissions are cut. In practice, however, having wind power available at a time of low electricity demand is just a nuisance because the combined-cycle gas-fired generating capacity that supplies almost half of the country's power only works efficiently when running at its design output and it takes time and wastes fuel to move its output up and down. The same is true, though to a lesser degree, for the ESB's coal-burning station at Moneypoint and the operators of similar plants in Britain have even been known to pay to have their power taken by the grid in the middle of the night so as to avoid the cost and trouble of shutting their plants down only to have to get them on full output three or four hours later.
The trouble is that Ireland's fossil-fuelled power stations are designed for continuous base-load operation and are thus unsuited for allowing much wind electricity on to the grid. This could be solved if some open-cycle gas-fired “peaking” power plants were installed. These are less energy efficient for continuous use than their combined-cycle cousins but can be brought on line quickly whenever they are required. “It's a scandal that the recent combined cycle power stations were given a derogation from the grid rules for plant responsiveness just when more responsiveness was required!” says Larry Staudt of the Centre for Renewable Energy at Dundalk IT.
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