Electricity Supply Board
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| Electricity Supply Board | |
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| Type | Statutory Corporation |
|---|---|
| Founded | Dublin, Ireland (1927) |
| Headquarters | Dublin, Ireland |
| Key people | Padraig McManus, CEO Tadhg O'Donoghue Chairman |
| Industry | electricity generation/transmission/distribution, telecoms infrastructure, consultancy |
| Products | Electricity, bandwidth solutions, engineering consultants |
| Revenue | Over €2 billion in 2004 |
| Employees | 8,500 (2005) |
| Slogan | "Bringing energy to your door" |
| Website | www.esb.ie |
The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) (Bord Soláthair an Leictreachais in Irish), sometimes called ESB Ireland to differentiate it from US utilities, is responsible for generating and transmitting most of the electricity in the Republic of Ireland.
There are three interconnectors with Northern Ireland Electricity and it is proposed that a new north-south interconnector will be constructed over the next few years. The Irish Government has recently approved the construction of a subsea East West Interconnector between Ireland and Wales, this will be owned by EirGrid. Another interconnector is being developed by a third party Imera Power.
The ESB has come under increased competition in recent year because of competition and deregulation policy. In recent years there have been independent power stations constructed at Edenderry, County Offaly; Huntstown and Ringsend, Dublin; Tynagh, County Galway and Aughinish, County Limerick.
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[edit] History
The ESB was established by the fledgling Irish Free State government under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927 to manage Ireland's electricity supply after the successful Shannon Scheme at Ardnacrusha. The scheme was Ireland's first large scale electricity plant - and at the time, it was believed that it would meet the total energy demands of Ireland. To give an idea of the growth in demand, the output of Ardnacrusha is now approximately two per cent of national peak demand for power.
By 1937, plans were being finalised for the construction of several more hydro-electric plants. The plans called for stations at Poulaphouca, Golden Falls, Leixlip (all in Leinster), Clady, Cliff and Cathleen's Fall (between Belleek and Ballyshannon in County Donegal), Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra (in County Cork). All these new plants were completed by 1949, and together harnessed approximately 75% of Ireland's inland water power potential. Many of these plants are still in operation — however as could be expected with continuing growth in demand their combined capacity falls far short of Ireland's modern needs.
With Ireland's towns and cities benefiting from electricity, the new government pushed the idea of Rural Electrification. Between 1946 and 1979, the ESB connected in excess of 420,000 customers in rural Ireland. The Rural Electrification Scheme has been described as "the Quiet Revolution" because of the major socio-economic change it brought about. The process was greatly helped in 1955 by the Electricity Supply Amendment Act, 1955.
In 1947, the ESB, needing ever more generation capacity, built the North Wall station on a 7.5 acre (30,000 m²) site in Dublin's industrial Port area on the North side of the River Liffey on the site of an old oil refinery. The original station consisted of one 12.5 MW steam turbine that was originally purchased for a power station at Portarlington but instead used at North Wall. Other power stations built around this time included the peat fired stations at Portarlington, County Laois, and Allenwood in County Kildare.
Because of the risks of becoming dependent on imported fuel sources and the potential for harvesting and utilising indigenous peat, the ESB - in partnership with Bord na Móna - established those stations and ESB also built Lanesboro power station in 1958. Located in County Longford, the plant burns peat, cut by Bord na Móna in the bogs of the Irish midlands. In 1965 the Shannonbridge station was commissioned. It is located in County Offaly. The two stations have been replaced by new peat-fired stations near the same locations, and peat is also used to power the independent Edenderry Power plant, in County Offaly.
As in most countries, energy consumption is low at night and high during the day. Aware of the substantial waste of night-time capacity, the ESB commissioned the Turlough Hill pumped storage hydro-electric station in 1968. This station, located in County Wicklow, pumps water uphill at night with the excess energy created by other stations, and releases it downhill during the day to turn turbines. The plant can generate up to 292 MW of power - but output is limited in terms of hours because of the storage capacity of the reservoir.
The 1970s brought about a continued increase in Ireland's industrialisation and with it, a greater demand for energy. This new demand was to be met by the construction of the country's two largest power stations — Poolbeg in 1971 and Moneypoint in 1979. The latter, in County Clare, remains Ireland's only coal-burning plant and can produce 915 MW - just shy of the 1015 MW capacity of Poolbeg. In 2002 and 2003, new independent stations were constructed - Huntstown Power (north Dublin) and Dublin Bay Power (Ringsend, Dublin).
In 1991, the ESB established the ESB Archive to store historical documents relating to the company and its impact on Irish life.
On 8 September 2003, two of the last remaining places in Ireland unconnected to the national grid - Inishturbot and Inishturk islands (off the coast of Galway)- were finally connected to the mains supply. Some islands are still powered by small diesel-run power stations.
60 wind farms are currently connected to the power system (July 2006) and have the capacity to generate 590MW of power, depending on wind conditions. These wind farms are mainly owned by independent companies and landowners.
On 16 March 2005, the ESB announced that it is to sell its ShopElectric (ESB Retail) chain of shops, with the exception of the Dublin Fleet Street and Cork city centre outlets, to Bank of Scotland (Ireland), who will convert them into high street banks. Existing staff are to be offered positions as bank tellers.
[edit] Relative size in a global context
The ESB had a monopoly in the Irish electricity market since 1927. Under European Union legislation, the Irish electricity market was opened to full competition for domestic users[1] in 2005. Business users had already been able to choose their electricity supplier from 2001. The deregulation of the market for electricity supply has been less effective than anticipated. Commentators have considered that the ESB should be broken up or privatised. This ignores the fact that ESB operated on a break even basis[2] for its first 70 years in accordance with the Electricity Act (1927). Having no shareholders requiring a dividend, meant that profit margins for competitors, who were to buy wholesale power for subsequent resale to customers moving away from ESB were small and several entrants to the market to supply customers in competition to ESB exited the market.
The population of Ireland and its electricity demand for a dispersed population, largely non-industrialised is relatively small in comparison to larger electrical utilities in Britain and mainland Europe and comparisons between a verticaly integrated[3] ESB and exclusive electricity distribution companies can be a superficial comparison where like is not strictly compared with like.
The demand in the hinterland of many British cities exceeds that of the entire ESB network and the ESB's relatively small scale operation should not be ignored in ecconomic comparisons. The Commission for Energy Regulation has allowed electricity price increases consistently to the ESB and this is partly to encourage competition in the market. Accordingly the ESB now reports annually, considerable cash surpluses.
Competition in the generation of electricity is feasible, but the fuel cost of generation is the single largest production cost and rapidly rising electricity costs over the past 5 years are stated to be to allow profit to be made both for the dominant player and the new players in the market. The reality of competition has been that the dominant competitor to ESB is Viridian, the Northern Ireland electricity company. The lack of new entrants to the market and the ageing and imminent obsolescence of much of the current ESB power stations, threathen the reliability of electricity supply in the future.[4] TheESRI have produced a report warning of the imminent consequences of past failure to invest in new generating plant.[5]In December 2006, ESB was given permission to build a new station on the site of its' existing station in Aghada, conditional on it selling its' entire output to others on a wholesale basis, on the basis that subsequent retail resale would create competition. Similar offers to competitors to allow them to build private power stations on ESB owned sites have failed to attract any interest. The reality as declared [6] by the Chairman of ESB in February 2007, is that the incentives on offer to potential new electricity providers are of no interest to Irish business.
If 2007 passes without buyers for Shannonbridge and Lanesboro in particular, and some expression of interest for Tarbert, the thing has to unravel,” said O’Donoghue.’ ‘The regulator needs punters, he needs players. I would say to competitors it’s time to stop talking and start making proposals.” The ESB is always keen to step into the breach and build new plants but this would defeat the government’s plans to boost competition.’ ‘Somebody has to move on it and we’re always ready and willing to build new plant but we need licences and consent
[edit] EIRGRID: Ireland's independent TSO
On July 1, 2006, a new state owned company, EirGrid plc, which is separate from all parties in the Irish electricity sector, took over responsibility for the operation of the Irish national grid. It has its own separate board and it reports to the CER and its main shareholder, the Irish government. It was established as an operator of the ESB's transmission system with ownership involving construction and maintenance of the transmission assets remaining with the ESB. On March 12 2007, an Irish Government white paper on energy policy[7] proposed vesting ownership of the transmission assets in EirGrid. This proposed breakup of the vertically integrated ESB would reduce the credit rating of ESB and lead to higher costs.[8] EirGrid is responsible for balancing electricity consumption and generation. EirGrid operates the wholesale power market and is cooperating with its counterpart in Northern Ireland (SONI or System Operator Northern Ireland) on the establishment of an All Island wholesale electricity market. More information on the functions of EirGrid, along with graphs of electricity demand updated every 15 minutes, are available on its website, www.eirgrid.com.
[edit] Divisions of ESB
Businesses within ESB include :
ESB Power Generation, which is responsible for electricity generation and has 19 power stations and a wind power subsidiary;
ESB Networks, which maintains the national grid's transmission infrastructure, across high, medium and low voltages;
ESB International (ESBI), which is a leading engineering consultancy firm and manages projects abroad in the electricity supply, generation and distribution markets;
ESB Retail traditionally operated a chain of high street electrical shops under the ShopElectric brand. These have been sold to Bank of Scotland (Ireland) and have closed.
[edit] Facilities
Although Ireland has no nuclear power plants, an Act of the Oireachtas in 1971 created the Nuclear Energy Board. Later there was a proposal to build a nuclear power plant at Carnsore Point, and preparatory work was carried out, but this never resulted in an operational plant, owing to widespread public opposition. ESB's generation capacity relies on oil, coal, gas and peat, supplemented by hydro-electric and wind generation. Moneypoint and Poolbeg are the two most significant fossil fuel power stations — their combined capacity accounts for over a third of total capacity. Much of the peat is supplied by Bord na Móna while Bord Gáis supplies gas via its network.
The Ardnacrusha hydro-electric scheme on the river Shannon was a major engineering feat in a nascant Irish state. There are additional hydro-electric schemes on the rivers Clady, Erne, Lee and Liffey. The company also operates a few small wind farms throughout the country through its subsidiary . Hibernian Wind Energy. Hydro and wind farms are significant renewable energy sources Turlough Hill pumped storage scheme although a hydro plant is not a renewable energy source, as it requires grid energy to pump water uphill for subsequent release downhill.
[edit] Capacity of Major ESB Plants
| Generation Capacity[9] |
Plant | Location | Fuel | Year First Unit Commissioned |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,020 MW | Poolbeg | County Dublin | Oil and Gas | 1971 |
| 915 MW | Moneypoint | County Clare | Coal | 1985 |
| 620 MW | Tarbert | County Kerry | Oil | 1969 |
| 525 MW | Aghada | County Cork | Gas | 1981 |
| 292 MW | Turlough Hill | County Wicklow | Pumped Storage | 1968 |
| 266 MW | North Wall | County Dublin | Oil and Gas | 1947 |
| 240 MW | Great Island | County Wexford | Oil | 1967 |
| 150 MW | West Offaly Power | County Offaly | Peat | 2005 |
| 115 MW | Marina | County Cork | Gas | 1953 |
| 100 MW | Lough Ree Power | County Longford | Peat | 2004 |
| 86 MW | Ardnacrusha | County Clare | Hydro | 1927 |
[edit] Standards
The Shannon Scheme was the start of the ESB's reliance on German electro-technology, especially for plant, in particular Siemens and the associated 220 volt (now 230 volt) supply. Domestic equipment mostly followed the UK British Standards for the most part with very few exceptions, perhaps the only significant anomaly being that Irish bathrooms generally do not have pull cord-operated lights but rather a traditional wall mounted light switch outside. A small number of old installations used the European "side-earth" type sockets but the majority of buildings use British style plugs and sockets. German/Swiss style fuseboxes were almost universally used in preference to UK-style consumer units containing rewirable or cartridge "wylex" fuses although these are now being superseded by circuit breakers in newer buildings. The main fuse in Irish domestic supplies is usually only 63 amperes compared to the 80 or 100 amp standard in the UK which sometimes causes difficulties for households using multiple electric showers.
[edit] Workers
The ESB is one of the largest companies in Ireland and employs over 8,500 people, it is 5% owned by its workers - this ownership is known as ESB ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) Trustee Limited. The company is heavily unionised with the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) being one of the largest unions in the company. The last major strike was in 1991, though strike action has been threatened as recently as February 2005 and often at times of industrial dispute. National surveys show, in line with other similar semi-state sector workers, that wages are above the national average - one recent survey [2] showed that the average salary costs are twice the national average. It should however be remembered that workers of the company may be "on call" after hours, weekends and at holidays because of the unpredictability of emergencies.
[edit] See also
- Economy of the Republic of Ireland
- History of Ireland
- List of Irish companies
- Public ownership
- State-owned enterprise
- Viridian_Group Northern Ireland Electricity Company
- rolling blackout The "Zone rota" system used during labour strikes
[edit] References
- ^ No company offers supply to domestic consumers as an alternative to ESB as of October 2006.
- ^ Costs and revenue should be similar with no profit on sales to be taken.
- ^ ESB generates, transmits, distributes and sells its product.
- ^ ESRI report warns of risk of electricity shortages
- ^ pdf format document
- ^ [1]
- ^ Energy White Paper March 2007
- ^ Proposals will affect the ESB’s credit rating
- ^ Powering the Country - ESB Power Generation (retrieved 12 December 2006)
[edit] Print
- R. O'Connor, J.A. Crutchfield, B.J. Whelan. Socio-Economic Impact of the Construction of the Esb Power-Station at Moneypoint, Co. Clare (Economic and Social Research Institute, 1981) ISBN 0-7070-0041-6
- Tim Hastings. Semi-States in Crisis: The Challenge for Industrial Relations in the ESB and Other Major Semi-State Companies (Oak Tree Press, 1994) ISBN 1-872853-79-X
[edit] Online
- Official website - Electricity Supply Board
- ESB International
- ESB Independent Energy
- Eirgrid
- History of Ardnacrusha
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