Well said

Cheap electricity for Ireland first, though – electricity and gas prices are rocketing (my neighbour just got a €600 Airtricity bill!)

@ sinabhfuil,

Wind energy is more expensive than fossil fuel based energy. Only makes commercial sense because of the carbon credits so don’t hold your breath

Yeh I just got a €400 one from the ESB.
It’s hard to see a negative to this story , that sort of employment in such a sustainable industry is fantastic.. Have they said what the employment would be in other than the construction of them?
It certainly is a pity we couldn’t feed into our own grid first imagine what that would do to our renewable numbers..

Airtricity are a British company. I was with them and all they gave me were over inflated estimates. When I changed back to an Irish company they had to send me a check.

€400 and €600 Leccy bills? Are yiz sure the immersion is off?

Did they have their house light up like christmas?

“Lit”

Things are awful black and awful bad all together. I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if the ground was electrocuted from a faulty wire from these monster machines and everyone killed but the children. The poor children left to starve. Is that what ye want. Sure 30’000 jobs, that’ll be only for the first 2 days after that it will probably be down to 5 people and they’ll make the unemployed spin them on windless days. Twill be the finishing of us I tell ya.

Could we also export the Healy-Rae’s? Methinks they qualify hugely in the context of producing big bags of wind !

Record numbers of people getting gas and esb cut off, add we’re exporting energy to Britain.
Echoes of the famine anyone?

#Hyperbole

Make a choice, would you rather burn fossil fuels to produce energy and kill the air we breathe or use wind energy?

Really? Looks like we’re being shafted. Literally.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21147279

@ stephen

‘kill the air we breathe ‘ Bit dramatic there Steven. If you really believe this the world need you in China India or Brazil

No

€400 is from them not reading the meter for the guts of a year its usually around €200, rural house, more lights pumps etc.
Once knew a lad who’s bill was over 1k each bill. He had a farm though …. In the kitchen.

Eddie…… Brilliant! Haha

Yup!!

lets all clap like idiots as we watch the next market bubble being created that will eventually cost US more than it was ever worth!!

In contrast to all the Irish media portraying this as great news, this is how the BBC is covering the story:

“From an Irish perspective this is not selling the family silver; this is giving it away. There is no money staying in Ireland that I can see, but from the British perspective it is a good deal.”

It was also made very clear in BBC’s radio interview with element power’s spokesman, that the only reason they’re being built over here is because there’s less people to object to their construction, than in the British countryside. It will also cost the UK £7bn less, to build them here.

This is really poor coverage from the journal…no links or data to reports based on science.Its basically a PR statement for the developers….Do people trust developers in suits to sort out our energy/pollution situation?Really?this is another Rossport…the developer and the government are going to force a anti-democratic landgrab on this area and the people…wind FARMs are based on flawed/fabricated/made-up science…wind turbines are great for single houses and small projects.Wind FARM even sounds made up…the jobs part is key.-nowhere near 30000 jobs willbe created,no international research can back that up because its plucked out of the air..why would the developers make false claims?because the whole project is fabricated…they orginally said 50000….the UK givernment,Pat Rabbitte,the Dept Communications Energy and Natural Resources,Bord Na Mona,the developers and consultants,local councils etc are all involved in promoting a false and negligent science.Why?Who benefits?Why do the media back this project without checking independent scientific research?What happens to the environment/birds/landscape?

Argyll grandmother takes UK and EU to the United Nations over plans to turn Scotland into windfarm ‘hedgehog’
Christine Metcalfe claims UK Government and the EU have breached a fundamental tenet of citizens’ rights under the UN’s Åarhus Convention
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/argyll-grandmother-takes-uk-and-eu-to-the-united-nations-over-plans-to-turn-scotland-into-windfarm-hedgehog-8399574.html

This is a great campaign from Wales…the midlands needs a similiar type people campaign to stop this plan.Great page and it explains many pros and cons for thos who are unsure of what wind farms actually are…

http://www.montgomeryshireagainstpylons.org/wind-farms/#.T-e1P5FdnER
“There is nothing wrong with using wind turbines to capture energy and convert it into electricity. The problem with wind turbines and wind farms is one of scale. As a small part of our efforts to make green energy, feeding into local networks, they work by giving us energy some of the time. 30% of the time if you believe the manufacturers, 21% of the time if you look up their monitored performance in 2010.

By deciding to put all your efforts into developing wind farms by building larger and larger turbines and covering more and more land we are heading for disaster. No matter how large the turbine (and the latest generation are as tall as the London Eye) they only work when the wind is blowing. When the wind stops, as it did for days this winter when high pressure sat over the island freezing the atmosphere, the turbines stop too. When the wind is strong they are shut down because, otherwise, they will blow over. Wind power will never be a constant reliable source of electricity and it is far less efficient than many other forms of renewable energy.

So why are we, in Mid-Wales, about to cover an area of a thousand square miles in wind farms which will, at the very best a produce only 0.58% of the country’s current electricity needs? There are two reasons. The second is how greed and speculation play their part and the first is TAN 8. We have been sold down the river by ‘Technical Advice Note 8 on Renewable Energy’ which was published by the Welsh Assembly Government in July 2004. It marked out Mid-Wales as fit for wind farm development and, crucially,TAN8 is designed to ensure that wind farms get planning approval. It can also be used by the Assembly Government to help over-rule any Local Authority decisions that have rejected wind farm planning applications in TAN8 areas.

The second reason, and you should read this and grow very angry indeed, is because of Renewable Obligation Certificates ROCs. Wind Turbines do not simply produce electricity, they produce something far more valuable, they produce ROCs. Three per cent of the energy provided by non-renewable energy producers, that is power stations and the power companies like Scottish Power, must be supplied from a renewable source. To do this they can buy a Wind Farm (hence Scottish Power’s great interest) or they get fined so much per kWh by the government. If they don’t want the fine they can buy ROCs to make up the 3 per cent.

Wind Farms register with the government’s energy regulator, OFGEM which then issues one ROC for every MWh generated. So, every turbine is producing electricity and ROCs and the ROCs can be bought not only by the power companies but they can be sold on the open market. Banks and Investment Houses around the world are scrambling to buy ROCs. This is speculation and this is why inefficient wind farms are so profitable.”

Lakeland windfarm information group..Mullingar
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lakeland-windfarm-information-group/441901932538961

If your for or against wind farms its still crazy do build them anywhere near Connemara but thats what the wind farmers want to do…
http://www.connemaraagainstwindfarms.com/

I wrote to a bunch of Ministers and TDs asking for a scheme where people can buy thermal solar panels (for hot water – these work really well in Ireland, and can give you 2/3 of your hot water for free) over 5 years on their utility bills. This was done with storage heaters, the first form of central heating in Ireland, back in the 1960s, and worked like a dream; people who couldn’t afford the big outlay in one go were able to effectively borrow from the utility company and buy it on the never-never.
Nary an answer from most of them.
The great thing about this scheme is that it would bring many of the plumbers and electricians made jobless by the recession back into work, it would cut our carbon footprint, it would release electricity capacity for industry, and it would improve Irish lifestyles.
But maybe politicians, on their level of pay, don’t understand the concept of being unable to shell out €4,000 for a home improvement in one go.

Josh- Its not hard to see, you’re from another planet and I can’t do much about the other Countries on my own?

Why the red thumbs for the idea of being able to buy solar hot water systems on the never-never and get loads of people back into work? Odd!

43% voted no… ah yes this would be the ‘we want jobs’ brigade who also have the philosophy of ‘not in my back yard’. Typical i suppose.

I gave you a green thumb so its even steven now at two each. Solar panels are the way, heats my water every day with a leccy bill of around €110 evert two months.

@Sinabhfuil, the problem with your idea is that it is far too sensible for Leinster House.

30000 jobs is a seriously inflated figure. Britian have stopped giving planning for on shore wind farms, so instead of building them offshore there robbing all resources. Once installed they need very little maintenance or manual intervention.
There pulling the wool over or eyes.

And this topic has nothing to do with the price of electricity so what are you all banging in about.

Won’t work as the market is deregulated and people aren’t paying bills. So no company who answers to a board is going to front up theory to customers to leg it. Get a Loan from the bank. Same thing.

That’s nothing, I had one over the summer from the ESB or ” electric ireland” as they now call themselves (feels a bit like the eircom makeover), for €1,200

Well said

Adrian, you got a better idea the produce electricity???? You are full of it

Brian, firstly. The Brits are handing out planning permits for on shore and off shore.

He must have left the immersion on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52bna-tn_dY

Yes great news for wind farm developers. Not so good news for the Irish and British consumers who will see their bills rise because of this.

Nope

It may postpone them going up as fossil fuels sky rocket!

The quicker we become energy independent the better.

The reason it’s going straight to England is because the local infrastructure is not set up to distribute it to populated areas in Ireland, however it will be in time. Look up Grid 25.

Our bills will rise – we have to fork up the cost of the fossil fuel energy required to back up these pieces of junk.

PS all hidden costs. No transparency given.

The less CO2 emissions the better for our environment and also the more carbon credits to sell on the open market. Can’t understand all the thumbs down. Feel free to enlighten me if I missed something?

@ simon
Hopefully not. Energy is expensive enough here as it is and it’s hard to feel good about the environment on an empty stomach

That’s the truth.

You can’t store wind energy so it makes sense to sell surplus to the UK. whether or not we should be creating a surplus is a commercial decision.

There is much to be gained from this but there will be an environmental impact.

Why can’t you store it? Seems like a fib to me,
what if they all connected to a big rechargeable battery

Simon, I won’t base energy modeling decisions on the EU ETS. The price of carbon has fell dramatically since it was first rolled out roughly 20€/t . The carbon price floor will be introduced in the UK to try to address this and givve the market some confidence. Have a look at the EU ‘state of the carbon market report 2012’. The EU ETS is in crisis at the moment they’re trying to address the growing structural supply and demand imbalance. Finland even give natural gas fired CHP generators a 50% tax rebate! Over the next two years I would envisage the carbon market under going some serious changes.

@PerkyBeans a big rechargeable battery in the form of energy storage reservoirs could be a solution, Turlough Hill is a good example of this tech, it’s been going strong for yonks now.

We will reach our goal of 40% by 2020.
The grid can’t sustain anything over 50% so this doesn’t really affect our capabilities.

Because its not financially viable, the battery would need to be massive and would be very damaging to the environment.

Good question Simon. But associating windfarms with reduction of carbon emissions and dependency on fossil fuels is like associating “common good” with bankers. Windfarms only work because of the generous subsidies given to the supplier by taxpayers. They have to be backed up by 100% fossil fuel mostly gas, hence we and Britain are still importing the same amount of gas as ever.

This is about money for the developers and jobs for Rabbit and Co when they are turfed out next time.

As for England, the Lib Dems are living in windfarm cuckoo land. The Tories know they dont work. Have a read of The Telegraph’s wind power section for more.

Then we need to buy extra carbon credits like we do every year wasting money while polluting out air. Keep it here and reduce our pollution and our reliance on fossil fuels

Buy carbon credits from who ? Its a self imposed carbon tax

U might wanna google carbon emission trading. Since the Kyoto protocol we have had to buy carbon credits from other nations in order to meet our own requirements under the treaty. Not so much now thou since the global downturn.

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/government-spent-72m-on-carbon-credits-it-didnt-need-1703813.html

Wind energy is very expensive to produce it has hidden costs like fossil fuel power stations having to generate the same amount of power to supply the grid. Investment costs are so high that it has to be fully subsidised.

The only reason there is any movement in this sector is that we signed up carbon quota and will accept carbon taxes if we exceed limits. Wind energy has been deemed zero carbon.
UK will accept wind energy and gain carbon credits while the backup nuclear power station in UK sells us power.

If we where serious about being fossil fuel independent we would be moving towards proven technology like nuclear

Next best is using UK nuclear generated power but it does have a draw back in that there is less jobs here and depending on a foreign state for our power needs

what about all the “non nationals” living here ken? or are you advocating a two tier energy system?maybe we could use a card system similar to that proposed by healy rea for urban drinkers to be allowed more than a pint !
if cheaper energy is going to be produced in this country it should be for the benifit of the whole country, not just those orn here, after all we pay into the revenue too.

Hi Eric, you’ve picked up on something that is not meant whatsoever.

When I say the “Irish People” I mean the people living in Ireland. Nationality is irrelevant…. my point is that resources of Ireland should benefit Ireland.

They are everywhere already. I think we are better putting up a couple of hundred within a few square miles rather then putting up 4 or 5 here or there. Already there are small developments of 3-5 turbines spread out within a 15 mile radius of my front door. People become accustomed to them I guess but I would prefer if they were put in remote bogland areas.

@tomas phelan ” As of July 2012, 14.8% of Irish
electricity is being generated from
renewable sources, up from 5% in 1990.
Wind is the main source of renewable
energy production, increasing from less
than 1pc of total renewable production
in 1995 to over 40pc today.” 40% of 14.8% is nowhere near a third of our total energy generated it’s closer to 6% if you work it out

Sorry JJ should have stated the capacity to supply a third of the power needed. And on one day in April 2011 they were generating just under 50% of demand that day. That’s what I’ve been told by personnel when I’m working in these plants, which is quite regularly. I see you can use Wikipedia eh?

Ireland’s current load is 3.3Gw our current wind supply us 1Gw so at 23:15 tonight were at 33% you can download the Eirgrid app and check yourself

Do you support putting something in the wrong place which will remain for ever and a day??? Once they are up there is no turning back. Should be placed where gov were advised to put them

Damn right. No way would he be allowed to have the wind farms in England. There would be uproar.

The mid-lands has no real wind so they’ll be building the largest turbines on the globe. Selling it cheaply and allowing the British to save billions and meet their carbon requirements.

All we get is huge, uneconomical turbines, feck all money and protests. Maybe a few jobs at the beginning but wouldn’t be surprised if they were foreign companies with outside ‘expertise’.

Oh jolly good, let the Paddies do it for us!

Potential issue to our wind exports if the FSA determine that the wind used has blown over some cattle or pigs on its way to the windfarm

Also when there is no wind which is extremely common in the midlands don’t we have to find a substitute, which will be fossil fuels?
Don’t we then have to buy this carbon allowance?
Aren’t wind farms actually one of the most uneconomical forms of energy?

Obviously you haven’t travelled much and seen wind farms not only in the UK but in other parts of world also.

That makes zero sense. What has travelling to do with this? I am stating that wind farms are close to pointless. The people of Britain would never allow turbines 50 meters higher than the Spire in Dublin. Get real with this. We are being blinded by false statements about employment. Wind farms are a stop gap solution that actually cause more carbon.

Oh I see. Obviously you need to learn to read.
‘No way would he be allowed to have the wind farms in England’ – meaning these particular wind farms – the wind farms with 180m turbines

No because its purely for export this will not effect our grid

Well said. I can vouch for that first hand.

180m is the height of the tip of the blade. Not the tower height. Nobody at present makes turbines that high

The Wind fairy!

Its not efficient right now but sure as hell will be when oil and gas start running out and harder and costly to find.
Have you a better plan Niall love to hear it

I have a better plan. Why not subsidise every home, or let’s say as much as possible” with their own way of generating energy. A small wind turbine might be enough for one house or a couple of houses. Simply said a windturbine for everyone. But the problem is that we can’t have that, we can’t be free to harvest what is rightfully ours. That’s only reserved for the big EU subsidised companies.

There’s no money staying on Ireland?? But we’d be selling it so money would be coming in to the country from England!?!

And it is only cheaper than UK offshore! not on shore, and we still cant compete with the Scots!

Just because something creates jobs doesn’t mean it’s a good idea! Just like the property boom..

They just have to concentrate really really hard and find a black speck in the sky and focus in on that. The negative mind is capable of amazing things.

So Ryan, wind energy harms you in what way exactly?
Jobs, money flowing in the economy and creating an expertise. I really don’t see how this isn’t a good idea.

Mark I’m very much for more wind energy especially as Ireland is one of the windiest countries in Europe as well as the fact that we will have an energy crisis in years to come however my point was that the justification for such projects shouldn’t be base solely on the amount of jobs that will be created, it can seem a bit tunnel visioned with the recession!

Because it’s not correct

PS – the wording of the poll leaves something to be desired – also the almost assumed assumtion of 30,000 jobs .
” would u like to know more about the Errection of Massive wind Energy Turbies to export energy to uk ”.

If this is such a great idea — why are we not the benefactors and doing it ourselves – we would need hardly any oil imports ?????????????.

180m isn’t massive for a turbine

180m is pretty massive for a wind turbine. The tallest in the world is 210m. To put that into perspective the spire is around 121m high.

http://thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/120558,Polish-power-plant-boasts-worlds-tallest-wind-turbines

Not disagreeing that they can be an eyesore in the wrong place. Point being that if they were placed in the correct place. (5 km2 block off the west coast of Clare) you will not see 180m turbines and you would have a sufficient amount of energy coming off the development to warrant them

180m is massive the standard is 70m

No chance is the standard 70m. Hub height starts at 50m then goes up as follows 60; 65; 73; 80; 85; 90; 95; 100; 105; 110; 114; 119; upto 140

you obviously don’t live anywhere near them

How about supplying ourselves first? More blatant idiocy.

Was thinking the exact same myself!

Seamus, the English have wind farms, what makes you think they don’t?

Yes… All the eagles that we don’t have (except for a select few introduced to national parks) will be killed…

Sarah they don’t low onshore wind farms any more. They have 2.5 times more wind then use with a much bigger population

And why don’t we all move over to electric cars while we’re at it and replace all the buses with trams.

Trams drive on electricity, that has to be produced by ……??? ;-)

Trams drive on tracks.

No wind mill in the world has ever powered even 1 home. Its a scientific impossibility. You need fossil fuel back up.

The only reason wind farms work is because they receive generous subsidies. The correct way to report this is :

“The energy produced will be enough to provide subsidies equivalent to the subsidies received for the provision of normal reliable energy to 3 million homes”

“And why don’t we all move over to electric cars while we’re at it and replace all the buses with trams.”

and the difference would be…………

In regards to the UK… Our domestic market is too small and too volatile, no firm is going to plow serious development or R&D without the potential to tap the UK/EU market it’s far too risky and there’s no where to grow.

The goal is a smart grid to power all of Europe. The starting point is a bog in Mayo.

Let the starting point be your back yard and come back to me later

Orkney has a deal like that http://orkneymicrorenewables.com/free-electricity/

Now that would be a fair way of doing it. I live close to a wind industry and it’s not nice. With a scheme like that it would at least give me some profit. Now I am just left with the negative effects and I still pay the same electricity bill.

in otherwords, the windfarms are so useless and damaging that they had to buy off the local community. yea sounds great……..

I voted No because windfarms dont work and result in people dying of cold afraid to turn on the heating.

we will still be buying in the same amount of fossil fuels as before so you are living in planet utopia

Maintenance.

And installation.

And we’ve got a lot of flat, low lying land, which is only now feasible to produce power from due to turbine development

Also grid connection. 1 km of over head power line is about €20,000 and the infamous argument about laying underground or buried HV cables would cost €210,000 per km-not sure sure if those pylon campaigners realise the sheer cost attached.

highly unlikely since we will be paying for the back up power required when there is no wind, which happens fairly regularly. bills will go up obviously.

Id rather have the beautiful Irish landscape free of these monstrosities than have free energy.