Dreaming of pumped hydro

Does this mean that a plan to fill a valley and use it for pumped hydro won’t win the Your Country Your Call prize? Sounds like the guys from Steorn are definitely going to win now.

@Richard

Beautiful graphics indeed (so do Steorn actually – must be a pre-requisite!)Does anyone in the market actually take Spirit of Ireland seriously?

The concept is fairly simple folks, smooth energy supplies from variable sources using pumped storage hydro, thereby ensuring security of supply and good prices, similar to the interconnector (look up European supergrid). It has been used very effectively in many countries, including Germany quite recently, and I see no reason why it wouldn’t work just as well here. Comparing it to Steorn is just silly.

Richard,

Conventional pumped hydro IS expensive to install, however its benefits are beyond reproach and it is an established tech, how much better that S of I will now do the job much more cost effectively.

What are your main concerns about seawater pumped hydro.

If its so inefficient why has Germany just completed its Waldeck 140MW pumped storage hydro plant last year? Indeed why are they widely used around the world?

I would agree that its not the norm, but then again its not suitable for many environments, none of which actually addresses the point I rasied. What might be an interesting exercise would be to compare the cost of importing enough gas, coal, oil and other fuels for the purposes of electricity generation annually into Ireland and weighing that against a smoothed supply from energy we pluck out of thin air over say a twenty year period?

Graham Brennan in SEI has gone on record as stating that we could produce the overwhelming majority of our electrical needs from wind power using readily available sites. In addition we have offshore and blue water resources to consider, plus the advantages of having our first major domestic export industry, something the country badly needs, should we then decide to begin manufacturing wind turbine components.

Denmark manages to employ 30,000 people with €4 billion in annual exports each year on the strength of its wind industry. There is no reason similar could not be achieved here in Ireland. The myth of manufacturing trending towards poorer countries is derailed by countries like Germany and Japan, some of the highest paid people in the world, with an excellent standard of living, and some of the largest exporters on earth as well.

I note you’ve completely avoided my point on cost comparisons over time and fuel supply stability and subsidies.

@Ronan Burke,

The PSH capacity installed in China at end-2009 comprises approx. 2% of total installed capacity. Even if all the projects you have indicated were implemented this percentage would probably increase to 3.5%. I think the SoI folks are being a bit more ambitious than this.

From the limited amount I have seen, I reckon there may be scope for some PSH of this nature in 20-25 years when the open cycle gas turbines that are being planned to supplement wind generation are coming to the end of their useful lives.

@Pat,

I see you are both converted and optimistic, but there are some fundamental economic problems with the EU internal electricity (and gas) market project. I set them out in response to Colm McCarthy’s contention that eletcricity generation, once externalities are addressed, is a pure private good. I reproduce the text here for convenience:

“The progressive roll-out of retail competition not just in Ireland, but in the UK and throughout the EU is destroying the ability to convert the long term commitment of final consumers to pay for secure and reliable supply of electricity on demand into bankable long term contractual commitments to finance the provision of generation, bulk supply and network services. These assets are specific and long-lived. Investment in these assets must be underpinned by long term commitments to ensure full recovery. Competing retailers focusing on short-term market share and customer churn are neither willing nor able, on their own, to enter into these commitments. They have no ability to lock-in the customer base whose revenue is required over the long term to enter into these commitments. Therefore, irrespective of the short-term prices in the wholesale market or the capacity payments awarded annually, investors are reluctant to commit the necessary long-term finance – unless some policy and regulatory guarantees are provided.

As a result, power generation is no longer purely private – and this chicken is coming home to roost in Britain – the most private sector-based industry in the EU – and increasingly in other member-states. It may seem like heresy for an economist to contend that competition at the retail level is the problem and not the solution, but short term wholesale markets in which retailers participate- that are often illiquid – provide neither the price signals nor the assurance of investment recovery required.

In terms of curtailing the incumbent’s generation market share, of developing the all-island market and of financing network investment, Ireland has moved out onto a limb – and consumers increasingly are being burdened by the resulting excessive costs. And bigger burdens are on their way to meet the Green Party’s decarbonisation agenda.”

I suppose my simple point is it makes no sense to even think about bolting a large-scale project such as that envisaged by SoI onto a sector that exhibits such serious policy and regulatory dysfunction.

We need to get back to some basic economics, address the policy and regulatory issues and then, perhaps, it may be possible to assess the SoI project in a proper context and on its own merits. Until then, it’s just labour in vain.

Ronan,

you need to learn the difference between power and energy. providing 1000MW power from pumped storage for a few hours is a different proposition to backing up an inherently unreliable power source such as wind.

spirit of ireland propose backup for a few days. but wind speeds vary also on longer time-scales, from weeks to years. the proposal does not give “energy independence” or solve the intermittency problem. it just reduces it somewhat, no doubt at staggering cost.

but hey, this is ireland, who cares about some silly principles physics or of finance?

@Ronan Burke
“Denmark manages to employ 30,000 people with €4 billion in annual exports each year on the strength of its wind industry. There is no reason similar could not be achieved here in Ireland. ”

Perhaps, but highly unlikely now. Denmark had first mover advantage in this sector, strating after the 1970s oil shocks and building on an existing engineering industry (mainly, agricultural engineering).
Denmark also had tax breaks for investors in wind energy and guaranteed prices for the output, in the form of a feed-in tariff on a “grid must-take” basis.
Fine if you are building competence and capacity in a new industry which you hope will be export oriented, where most of the money circulates within your own economy. It is a form of market making by the public sector – not unlike defence spending or medical research or space research or even early stage IT in the US. If I remember correctly, during the early stages, Intel’s only customers were US military buyers.

I would like to believe you are right. Have I missed something?
Why focus on what seems to be a simplistic “me too” – years after the conosolidation has taken lace in the original host of wind turbine manufacturers?
During the 1980s and 1990s, companies like Aldiscon, Riverdance and Ryanair did produce goods/services in Ireland that were new and different.
We need to ensure that there are sufficient people and resources available for similar kinds of innovation to emerge here again.
As Colm McCarthy points out in another post, perhaps a do nothing policy on wind turbine manufacturing is now the best policy.

An important statistic to bear in mind is that in order to meet our carbon targets, and depending on the growth scenario you choose to use, we might have to plant a 7MW turbine in the ground every between now and jan 2020, the current factory output of these turbines is about one a month.

We did lose first mover advantage on utility scale wind turbines, perhaps it would be a good idea not do similar with wave devices and it is heartening that the Dept of Energy and SEI are indeed alive to this possibility, wave however also needs dispatch mediation.

I had a look the Spirit of Ireland website. Hasn’t been updated for ages. Their latest tweet is from July 1st.

When I eead this piece I checked the date on the newspaper, assuming I had missed a month and it was in fact April 1st!

Richard

I have just discovered this tweeting universe and am busy learning the etiquette and rules of engagement. It seems the older you get, the more you must learn.

I am just about to enter what is described as middle age and I can honestly remember being a pre teen, and experiencing the excitement as some of my cousins, in areas of greater Dublin received electricity for the first time in the late sixties and early seventies.

I can also remember a lot of the arguments, including economic arguments, being used by people opposed to the need or even the concept of commercial radio and television.

Are there parallels to this debate, I suppose time will tell.

@Pat Gill,

SoI would do all Irish citizens a great service if it were to concentrate, initially, on the dysfunctional nature of policy and regulation in the electricity and gas sectors. Major reform is required before the feasibility of any large-scale investments may be considered.

I would prefer to see a somewhat more balanced (if not necessarily sceptical) article on this topic from the Environment Editor of Ireland’s most influential newspaper. He appears to have consulted no one bar, well, a proponent of the scheme.

Compare this to George Monbiot in the Guardian http://bit.ly/9R0Ck4. Like Frank McDonald his convictions on the need to ‘do something’ about climate change are not in doubt. Yet he’s prepared to call a government policy to that end (subsidies in the UK for solar panels) completely inappropriate and a huge waste of money.

“salt water and the Atlantic Ocean as the lower reservoir. I have not changed my mind during the week or indeed the year, but Organic Power works at a more realistic scale than Spirit of Ireland;”

It is only fair to state that the members of the Spirit of Ireland group are working on more than their own project and much of the work being done will result in companies such as Organic Power and others being able to progress their own projects in a more welcoming environment