Hoping that our lights stay shining in the years to come

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I’m not sure whether I’m bemused or just completely baffled at times by all of these debates that are going on about our energy requirements and how they can all be met by sustainable sources. There I was, for the past year or so, reassured on a number of fronts that electricity would meet nearly all our energy needs for the coming years and decades, when the headlines started to flash around about possible blackouts in Ireland over the next five winters.

I hadn’t realised until this week, that on an early January day of this year, an amber alert was issued by the people who monitor our electricity supply lines, namely the Single Electricity Market Operator (SEMO), in relation ‘to the tank running dry’.

To top everything off, one of our ‘old reliables’ of our new energy sources – the wind – didn’t blow at all nearly strongly enough last Winter, just when we needed it most.

It turned out to be a very uneventful 2020/21 storm season – and maybe in that regard we have to be thankful for small mercies – but as for consistent wind speeds to generate power over the dark months, our winter season of darkness was indeed very bad news for Ireland’s electricity generation capacity.

Thing got so scary in terms of electricity supplies during that first week or two in January that Eirgrid had asked the ESB to start up one of its Moneypoint generating stations in Clare, in case the worst came to the worst.

Moneypoint was an electricity generation ‘animal’ of the 1980s, fuelled mainly by coal, and a landmark in Clare for its tall chimneys which took years to construct. It’s due to be completely phased out by 2025, but alas it may have to be kept in reserve in case the worst comes to pass over the coming years.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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