Wind power in the Republic of Ireland

Wind turbines on Leitrims Corrie Mountain. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council maintains a database on incidences were turbine construction and their associated works, such as road construction on deep peat, resulted in environmentally degrading "bog bursts"/"peat flows". Events that accelerate the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.^[1] Following the Corrie Mountain burst of 2008, Ireland was fined by a European Court over its mishandling of wind farms on peatland.^[1][2]

As of March 2015 Ireland has an installed wind power nameplate capacity of 2,230 megawatts (MW).^[3] In 2014, the year-long average capacity factor, or actual electricity generation rate from the entire nation's installed capacity was approximately 30% of the time, with higher dependability in the gustier Winter months and lower in the Summer.^[4] In 2014 wind provided approximately 700 MW of electricity on average.^[5] In 2015 wind turbines generated 23% of Ireland's average electricity demand, one of the highest electric grid penetration values in the world.^[6] Ireland's 188 wind farms,^[7] are almost exclusively onshore, with only the 25MW Arklow Bank Wind Park situated offshore as of 2015. The Irish Academy of Engineers have analyzed Irish energy policy and have described wind as “an extremely expensive way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other alternatives”.^[8]

Previous milestones

External images

Today's prognosis and production

View of Ballywater Wind Farm in County Wexford, 21 Enercon E-70.

As of 2015, the island has 2,911 MW wind capacity. In 2014, 17.7% of Irish electricity came from wind, second only^[9] to the 30% of Denmark.

By 20 August 2013, Ireland had an installed capacity of 2,232 megawatts.^[10] The 2013 figure shows an increase of 232 megawatts compared to the figures reported on 24 March 2012. Depending on weather conditions the power was enough to supply 1.3 million homes in 2012.^[11]

On 31 July 2009, the output from the country's turbines peaked at 999 megawatts. At that time, 39% of Ireland’s demand for electricity was met from wind.^[12] On 24 October 2009, the output exceeded 1000 megawatts for the first time with a peak of 1064 MW. Once in April 2010, 50% of electricity demand was met from wind power.^[13] However, the wind generation capacity factor for 2010 was approx. 23.5%, giving an annual average wind energy penetration of approx. 11% of total kWh consumed.^[14][15]

On 19 July 2010 the Irish Wind Energy Association reported an installed capacity of 1746 megawatts, enough to power 753,000 households. 2012 capacity is more than four times the total of 495.2 megawatts in 2005. In 2008 alone, the rate of growth was 54.6%, amongst the highest in the world.^[16] Average 2013 output to 21/09/2013 is 486 Megawatts and Median 2013 Output is 393 Megawatts. Output can be as low as 3 Megawatts on a still day such as 12 July 2013 when a low of 3 Megawatts was reached at 9:30 am^[17] which is 0.012% of the Rated Installed Capacity of over 2,200 Megawatts.

As of July 2012, up to 14.8% of Irish electricity has been 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.^[18]

On 7 January 2015, the output from the country's turbines peaked reaching 2,514 megawatts (63% of load), a new record.^[9]

Background, Financing

Wind turbines on Inishmaan

Eddie O’Connor, then CEO of the semi-state owned peat harvesting company, Bord na Móna, commissioned the country’s first "commercial wind farm" in a cutaway peat bog in County Mayo in 1992.^[19]

In the Directive^[20] 2001/77/EC, otherwise known as the RES-E Directive, the European Union stated a goal to have 22% of the total energy consumed by member states to be produced from renewable energy resources by 2010. As a result, Ireland, in a report titled "Policy Consideration for Renewable Electricity to 2010", made the commitment to have 4% of its total energy consumption come from renewable energy resources by 2002 and 13.2% by 2010. The Department of Communications Marine and Natural Resources (DCMNR) founded the Renewable Energy Group (REG) which established the short term analysis group (STAG) to investigate a means of accomplishing this goal. To meet the 2010 target of 13.2%, 1,432 MW of electricity will need to be generated from renewable resources with 1,100 MW being generated from wind resources both onshore and offshore.

Ireland uses an EU industry subsidy known as the Public Service Obligation to support development of wind power.^[21] The PSO charge/"sneaky tax" is in place so that money is given to companies for generating electricity from renewable sources and to help fund peat-burning stations, as neither are competitive enough without it.^[22] Irish homes are charged €63 a year in the PSO levy, resulting in €328 million going to the Wind and peat companies as of 2015.^[23]

Offshore wind power

The Arklow Bank Wind Park, located 10 km off the coast of Arklow on the Arklow Bank in the Irish Sea, was Ireland's first offshore wind farm. The wind farm is owned and built by GE Energy and was co-developed by Airtricity and GE Energy. The site has 7 GE Energy 3.6 MW turbines that generate a total of 25 MW. The development of the site was originally divided into two phases with the first phase being the current installation of 7 turbines. The second phase was a partnership between Airtricity and Acciona Energy. Acciona Energy had an option to buy the project after the facility is completed. The wind farm was planned to expand to 520 MW of power. However, in 2007, Phase 2 was cancelled.^[24]

Although the waters off the Atlantic coastline of Ireland are a better site for wind farms because of the available wind resources, sites along the eastern coastline such as Arklow were chosen because of the shallower waters, which are 20 m deep or less.

The National Offshore Wind Association of Ireland (NOW Ireland) announced in April 2010 that 60,000 potential jobs could be created in the Irish marine, construction, engineering and service industries through the development of offshore wind energy in Irish and European waters. NOW Ireland also announced in the same month that over €50bn was due to be invested in the Irish Sea and Celtic Sea in the next two decades.^[25]

In Belfast, the harbour industry is being redeveloped as a hub for offshore windfarm construction, at a cost of about £50m. The work will create 150 jobs in construction, as well as requiring about 1m tonnes of stone from local quarries, which will create hundreds more jobs. "It is the first dedicated harbour upgrade for offshore wind".^[26]

Current trends

Grid connection is currently awarded on a 'first come, first connect' basis through Gate 3 procedures. On examination of the Gate 3 queue, there are a number of large onshore and offshore wind projects that are down the list and will, therefore, be offered grid connection towards the end of the anticipated 18-month processing period commencing in December 2009.^[27]

While planning permission normally expires after 5 years, the Planning and Development Act 2000 section 41 allows for a longer period. At present it is common to apply and obtain a 10-year permission for a wind energy development. Section 42 of the above Act originally permitted a 5-year extension of the "appropriate period" provided that substantial works were carried out. This caused major problems as the term "substantial works" was not clearly defined which resulted in a large variety in interpretation of what constituted substantial works among the various planning authorities. This issue was rectified by the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010 section 28 which inserted an additional paragraph allowing a once off extension not exceeding 5 years if "there were considerations of a commercial, economic or technical nature beyond the control of the applicant which substantially militated against either the commencement of development or the carrying out of substantial works pursuant to the planning permission"

The fourth issue regarding the generation of wind power is the Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff, or REFIT. The purpose of REFIT is to encourage development of renewable energy resources. For wind power production, the current limit to the tariff is 1,450 MW. However, applications currently being processed for grid connections exceed the limit by almost 1,500 MW for a total for nearly 3,000 MW. Since the limit is 1,450 MW, many of the applications for grid connections may not eligible for the tariff.^[28]

5 largest onshore wind farms

Environmental Impact & Greenhouse gases

Studies by the Vattenfall electricity company found; electricity generation by Hydroelectric, nuclear stations and wind turbines in-isolation, to all have a far smaller embodied carbon footprint than other sources represented. These studies on the total life-cycle, greenhouse gas emissions, per unit of energy generated take into account the Nordic utilities cradle-to-grave construction emissions etc. These results are largely in-line with those made in 2014 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.^[35]

In a typical study of a wind farms Life cycle assessment(LCA), in isolation, it usually results in similar findings as the following 2006 analysis of 3 installations in the US Midwest, were the carbon dioxide(co2) emissions of wind power ranged from 14 to 33 metric ton per GWh(14 - 33 gCO₂/kWh) of energy produced, with most of the CO₂ emissions coming from the production of concrete for wind-turbine foundations.^[36]

However, when approached from the effects on the grid as a whole, that assess wind turbines' ability to reduce a country's total electric grid emission intensity, a study by the Irish national grid, a grid that is predominately (~70%) powered by fossil gas, (and if it was 100% gas, would result in emissions of 410 - 650 gCO₂/kWh.^[37][38]) found that although "Producing electricity from wind reduces the consumption of fossil fuels and therefore leads to [electric grid] emissions savings", with findings in reductions of the grid-wide CO₂ emissions to 0.33-0.59 metric ton of CO₂ per MWh(330 - 590 gCO₂/kWh).^[39]

These findings were of relatively "low [emission] savings", as presented in the Journal of Energy Policy, and were largely due to an over-reliance on the results from the analysis of wind farms LCAs in isolation.^[40][41] As High electric grid penetration by Intermittent power sources e.g. wind power, sources which have low capacity factors due to the weather, either requires the construction of energy storage projects, that have their own additional emission intensity which must be added to wind power's system-wide pollution effects,^[42][43] or the more common practice of requiring a higher reliance on fossil fuels than the spinning reserve requirements necessary to back-up the more dependable/baseload power sources, such as hydropower and nuclear energy.^[40]

This higher dependence on back-up/Load following power plants to ensure a steady power grid output has the knock-on-effect of more frequent inefficient(in CO₂e g/kWh) throttling up and down of these other power sources in the grid to accommodate the intermittent power source's variable output. When one includes the intermittent sources total effect it has on other power sources in the grid system, that is, including these inefficient start up emissions of backup power sources to cater for wind energy, into wind energy's total system wide life cycle, this results in a higher real-world wind energy emission intensity than the in-isolation g/kWh value, a statistic that is determined by looking at the power source in isolation and thus ignores all down-stream detrimental/inefficiency effects it has on the grid.^[40] In a 2012 paper that appeared in the Journal of Industrial Ecology it states.^[44]

"The thermal efficiency of fossil-based power plants is reduced when operated at fluctuating and suboptimal loads to supplement wind power, which may degrade, to a certain extent, the GHG(Greenhouse gas) benefits resulting from the addition of wind to the grid. A study conducted by Pehnt and colleagues (2008) reports that a moderate level of [grid] wind penetration (12%) would result in efficiency penalties of 3% to 8%, depending on the type of conventional power plant considered. Gross and colleagues (2006) report similar results, with efficiency penalties ranging from nearly 0% to 7% for up to 20% [of grid] wind penetration. Pehnt and colleagues (2008) conclude that the results of adding offshore wind power in Germany on the background power systems maintaining a level supply to the grid and providing enough reserve capacity amount to adding between 20 and 80 g CO2-eq/kWh to the life cycle GHG emissions profile of wind power."'

According to the IPCC, wind turbines when assessed in isolation, have a median life cycle emission value of between 12 and 11 (gCO₂eq/kWh). While the more dependable alpine Hydropower and nuclear stations have median total life cycle emission values of 24 and 12 g CO2-eq/kWh respectively.^[37][38]

Peat CO₂ impacts & wildlife deaths

On the 16th of October 2003 at Derrybrien County Galway, at the site of what would become Ireland's largest wind farm in 2006, the 70 tower Derrybrien project resulted in the distruption of the underlying peatland and culminated in an almost 2.5 km long, 450,000 cubic meter peat slide, akin to a roaring^[45] "avalanche". While initially coming to rest 2.5 km away, and then with rain, entrance into the "Derrywee River" or Abhainn Da Loilioch,^[46] it eventually spilled 20 km away into "lough Cotra".^[47] While the lake was also the source of the townland of Gort's drinking water, and this caused distruptions to supply,^[46] an impact assessment on the wildlife within the lake determined that more than 50 per cent of fish in the lake had been killed due to this pollution, about 50,000 fish of all ages and species groups had perished. A smaller peat slide had occurred prior to the main movement on the 16th but it did not result in the suspension of the construction of the wind turbine farm.^[47]

Construction of turbines and access roads on top of peatlands results in the drainage and then eventual oxidation of the peat potentially emitting more CO2 than the turbines would save. As biochemist Mike Hall states, wind farms built on peat bogs may eventually emit more carbon than an equivalent coal-fired power station.^[48]

In the report on the peat slide it states: "The rationale for wind farms is that they reduce CO2 emissions compared to fossil fuels. In most places, emissions from wind farms are associated only with the construction of the components and vehicular emissions linked to the site’s development and maintenance. However, on peatlands, construction results in significant ongoing CO2 release because they are substantial long-term carbon stores and this carbon is released when they are disturbed...It is difficult to understand the logic of damaging long-term carbon stores to install devices whose purpose is to reduce emissions".^[47]

In a 2014 report for the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, which has similar peatland, it notes that siting wind turbines on peatland could release considerable carbon dioxide from the peat, and also damage the peatland contributions to flood control and water quality: “The potential knock-on effects of using the peatland resource for wind turbines are considerable and it is arguable that the impacts on this facet of biodiversity will have the most noticeable and greatest financial implications for Northern Ireland.”^[49]

The body representing industrial Peat harvesting in Ireland, Bord na Móna, announced in 2015 the "biggest change of land use in modern Irish history": harvesting energy peat is being phased out by 2030, due to the long expected depletion of the profitable lowland peat^[50] at which point the company would complete its transition to becoming a "sustainable biomass, wind and solar power" organization.^[51]

See also

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wind power in Ireland.

• www.sei.ie - Sustainable Energy Ireland, Ireland's national energy agency.
• www.iwea.ie - Irish Wind Energy Association
• Arklow Bank Wind Park, GE Brochure (PDF)
• Sustainable Energy Ireland's report on policies for Renewable Energy programs (PDF)
• Regional map of wind farms
• Irish wind industry

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