Spiritofireland.org - suggests energy independence in five years and much more

[realist]

13 months later. we now have the Clare wind strategy which is a model of the planning system envisaged, it is designed to enable larger wind farms in the most appropriate locations and also encourages electrical storage.

I happened to be down in West Clare recently for the launch of the cycling event planned for August. We met some people in Milltown who offered to bring us around the route which included the road from Milltown to the Hand and someone happened to mention the nearby wind farm so we took a detour to have a look. To say that it fits into the surrounding area is the same as saying a plantation of palm trees would be appropriate at the North Pole. We were also told that many of the locals have submitted objections to the proposal and I can see why.

I stated somewhere else that Mount Callan is protected under the habitats directive but now that I have actually seen the area I cannot believe that it has been chosen by Clare County Council as appropriate. We were also told that it used to be classified as visually vulnerable by Clare CC until the wind farm applications started arriving.

I have no doubt that Clare CC will approve the application so I only hope An Bord Pleanala will take into account the concerns of the people who actually live in the area who have submitted objections.

Incidentally, I can't comment on the noise from the turbines because only one of them was slightly turning - apparently there has been practically no wind for the month of February!

[fiannafailure]

I happened to be down in West Clare recently for the launch of the cycling event planned for August. We met some people in Milltown who offered to bring us around the route which included the road from Milltown to the Hand and someone happened to mention the nearby wind farm so we took a detour to have a look. To say that it fits into the surrounding area is the same as saying a plantation of palm trees would be appropriate at the North Pole. We were also told that many of the locals have submitted objections to the proposal and I can see why.

I stated somewhere else that Mount Callan is protected under the habitats directive but now that I have actually seen the area I cannot believe that it has been chosen by Clare County Council as appropriate. We were also told that it used to be classified as visually vulnerable by Clare CC until the wind farm applications started arriving.

I have no doubt that Clare CC will approve the application so I only hope An Bord Pleanala will take into account the concerns of the people who actually live in the area who have submitted objections.

Incidentally, I can't comment on the noise from the turbines because only one of them was slightly turning - apparently there has been practically no wind for the month of February!

I honestly don't know how to start replying to this post, so I suppose I wont, I have been told though that too much cycling when young can have an effect on the chances of developing prostate problems later on

[fiannafailure]

[quote=SAT;2479972]

So basically S of I initial project proposal has either morphed into something else entirely and far less ambitious or it has simply stalled.

The only change is that we now intend to build the HSR's one at a time instead of concurrently

It seems from fiannafailure's post S of I now claim the credit for the production of wind farms as a strategic success for their organisation (despite these being around for many years). I am curious to know just how many of Ireland's 124 installed wind farms, containing 1,153 turbines, they claim the credit for?

How would it be possible to claim credit for something that happened before S of I was formed, this is not a climate debate thread SAT

Noticeably absent from his post is (apart from a nod towards extolling what a worthwhile goal it is) any detail whatsoever on the core part of the initial proposal which was energy storage.

Ah well you see we were building the first HSR under the cover of a tent we have pitched near the cliffs of Moher, but now that you have blown our cover I suppose we will have to get the planning permission I referred to in my summary of the executive summary you asked for

[fiannafailure]

[quote=energy;2480402]

Sounds like it has stalled - although many meetings may have taken place nothing substantial has been produced or revealed to the public.

nothing substantial has been revealed to the public.

I have changed your sentence to reflect the trye position

Yes - seems more of a support group for wind energy.

Ah I was part of one of those 30 years ago, good memories

You are progressing with 20 wind co-ops and your criteria states they must be 10 times greater than current windfarms. Take the Mount Callan development in Clare Plans for Clare wind farm unveiled - The Irish Times - Thu, May 28, 2009 which is your model co-op. Using their 90MW installed capacity as a typical figure means you are planning on adding another 1800MW of wind to the Grid. According to Eirgrid "There are in excess of 200 applications representing approximately 4000MW of wind under
the Gate 3 programme." (http://www.eirgrid.com/media/EirGrid...s%20Report.pdf). Do you plan to skip the queue ?

Your figure is correct, under our plan though that 1.8GW will result in one gate application.

It is perhaps incorrect to describe the Gate process as a queue though, it is much more complicated than that.

At present Eirgrid wait for applications and then reinforce the grid, our plan calls for the local authorities to designate areas for wind development and then ask Eirgrid to reinforce for that designation.

In your earlier posts in this thread you state a major problem is that the areas where the best load factors are to be obtained are not close to the National Grid hence you needed to build your own (running in a North-South direction). How can you have the option of connecting to both ???

As the local collection network will meet the grid at the front gate of the HSR, any scenario is possible including the possibility of storage rather than grid curtailment or spillage

Sounds like you are getting peoples hopes up about connecting to an imaginary Grid or else you are locating windfarms with poor load factors close to the existing Grid

What gives you that impression

[sparkey321]

At present Eirgrid wait for applications and then reinforce the grid, our plan calls for the local authorities to designate areas for wind development and then ask Eirgrid to reinforce for that designation.

As the local collection network will meet the grid at the front gate of the HSR, any scenario is possible including the possibility of storage rather than grid curtailment or spillage

Pat

I am genuinely confused here.

Your fist statement seems to contradict everything you have ever said about the proposal.

Why are you connecting to the windfarms ? It goes against the theory behind the entire project and contradicts multiple comments regarding savings and zero subsidisation from the tax payer and bill payer.

The plan as outlined was that the reservoirs would act as a hub connecting to the grid and the wind-farms thereby reducing the cost of grid connection which is carried by the bill payers . Indeed in seem to remember that at one stage SOI were even going to pay for the grid connection.

If I read this correctly and you are advocating the connection of each wind-farm directly to the grid then it is a quantum change from SOI proposal to date.

It contradicts the entire proposal, the central co-op built around your reservoirs, a huge chunk of your justification for the cost reduction , everything.

Its just more of the same except now with an reservoir being built as a separate stand alone which brings me back to my original argument all that time ago.

Wind power is expensive, you have just eliminate a huge chunk of your basis for cost savings so there will be minimal effect on this.

You are now adding a whole new layer of cost on top of an already expensive power generation solution.

This is what really destroys SOI credibility.

The initial launch was a disaster, it over promised all over the place, was poorly thought out and made stupid claims. It bears no resemblance to where SOI now stand.

Even now initial claims are falling apart. Read back to the launch where SOi claimed to have spent the previous 6 months researching and developing their proposal. A few posts back you admit that this was rubbish. (in fairness it was already pretty obvious)

SOI keep moving the goal posts, the proposal morphs and changes all over the place. They should have kept their mounts shut, developed a fully planned, researched and realistic proposal and then gone public if they wished.

Call me naive but I dont think anyone is SOI did this to make a name for themselves or to make money. I think they genuinely believed in what they were saying but completely and utterly underestimated what they were trying to achieve. It was naivety at its most extreme and to be honest it believe you are still underestimating what needs to be done.

Do yourselves a favour, get some cash, hire an experienced manager with experience in energy and project management, hire a good PR company, admit the mistakes, roll back for 6 months, change the name and relaunch when you are at a more advanced stage.

[fiannafailure]

sparkey

I am genuinely confused here.

Your post deserves an adequate reply, you will have it in a few hours.

[Tigris Celtica]

I have a much more practical and sensible solution to Ireland's energy problems than the ridiculous ideas of "SOI" :

Can't we just attach generators to the graves of the men of 1916 ? - They must all be spinning in their graves that the Fianna Fail gombeens have made us a province of Europe once again and allowed us to be colonised by Poland et al along with all sorts of other foreign scammers from even further afield all too anxious to exploit the long suffering Irish taxpayers ...

[fiannafailure]

sparkey

Do yourselves a favour, get some cash, hire an experienced manager with experience in energy and project management, hire a good PR company

Already done, for building the first power station.

So what am I doing posting in the blogosphere ? You will have noticed that I removed the Spirit of Ireland tag from my signature some months ago, everything I write is my own opinion, not a PR piece for S of I

Call me naive but I dont think anyone is SOI did this to make a name for themselves or to make money. I think they genuinely believed in what they were saying but completely and utterly underestimated what they were trying to achieve. It was naivety at its most extreme and to be honest it believe you are still underestimating what needs to be done.

You are not naive at all in your statement, in fact it has cost the members of S of I a lot of personal money to get this far. So why did we do it, each has their own reason but a common theme is that we have all worked in energy over the years and understood the technical problems of connecting a large amount of renewables to the grid and agreed on the most efficient method to solve all of the problems. After that fact, almost everyone has their own, or shared motivation.

We possibly did underestimate the depth of what needed to be done, but that is not unusual in engineering, as you progress in a project and repeatedly refine your examination of a problem, the steps needed to solve the problem come into much clearer focus and you simply get on with it.

If this was a simple construction project the foundations would probably be under construction now, but it is not a simple construction problem and there is still an amount of work to be done to make the site suitable for those foundations if you get my drift.

My own motivation as you probably know is to save as many of the young engineers and technicians as possible from having no choice but to leave the country in order to make a living.

Why are you connecting to the windfarms ? It goes against the theory behind the entire project and contradicts multiple comments regarding savings and zero subsidisation from the tax payer and bill payer.

The plan as outlined was that the reservoirs would act as a hub connecting to the grid and the wind-farms thereby reducing the cost of grid connection which is carried by the bill payers . Indeed in seem to remember that at one stage SOI were even going to pay for the grid connection.

If I read this correctly and you are advocating the connection of each wind-farm directly to the grid then it is a quantum change from SOI proposal to date.

It contradicts the entire proposal, the central co-op built around your reservoirs, a huge chunk of your justification for the cost reduction , everything.

The central plank of S of I is to use the energy contained in a HSR to mediate the intermittancy of renewable energy and make it dispatchable on demand, we also wish to enable as many community based co ops as possible to own a bit of the action. A schematic of the proposal shows the HSR in the centre of a cluster of 100MW windfarms and connected to that HSR with private wiring, however we do not exclude windfarms owned by commercial companies and we do not exclude in certain circumstances paying Eirgrid to do some reinforcement to enable those presently existing or future commercial windfarms from entering power purchase agreements with S of I.

Again I will state that future onshore wind energy projects will be competitive with any other form of generation.

I will answer the general thrust of your post with the following, a few weeks ago a chap came up to me after a presentation in an Institute of Technology and asked why the Green Party and Eamon Ryan had not yet embraced S of I. My reply was genuine and real, many members of the Green would love to see the building of first S of I project announced in the morning, Eamon Ryan is the minister of Energy and the minister of Energy must make decisions affecting a very important aspect of Irish life and I for one would be very disappointed if those decisions were made without a lot of research from his department and a very convincing argument by gurriers like me, however while that process continues, we can both still be working on common problems, interconnection for example is not as simple as it seems, in various parts of this country and UK, vital infrastructure necessary for the connection of renewables is being held up by people who put arguments about scenery above the long term national interest and I will say at this point that scenic amenity does have some legitamacy and a balance must be struck, scurillous and ill informed gossip about health risks from power lines have none, unless the power line runs over your house or within a few metres of your house and a new powerline will not. And in any case, undergrounding an AC powerline does very little about magnetic fields.

That is what I said and that is what I believe, if I wanted an easy ride from any politician, I would have joined a political party and become the minister.

So nothing has really changed as regards the stated objective, we are simply getting closer to the goal.

[energy]

A schematic of the proposal shows the HSR in the centre of a cluster of 100MW windfarms and connected to that HSR with private wiring, however we do not exclude windfarms owned by commercial companies and we do not exclude in certain circumstances paying Eirgrid to do some reinforcement to enable those presently existing or future commercial windfarms from entering power purchase agreements with S of I.

Are the 20 Co-Ops you have organised with 1800MW of installed capacity going to connect to your "private wiring" or the National Grid ???

This is what really destroys SOI credibility.

The initial launch was a disaster, it over promised all over the place, was poorly thought out and made stupid claims. It bears no resemblance to where SOI now stand.

It has zero credibility - the amount of backtracking & u-turns in the last few posts alone (after a year of detailed engineering!!!) - confirms the view within industry that Spirit of Ireland is a glorified talking shop.

a few weeks ago a chap came up to me after a presentation in an Institute of Technology and asked why the Green Party and Eamon Ryan had not yet embraced S of I.

All he has to do is read this thread to know the plan is a load of waffle !

[joel]

I happened to be down in West Clare recently for the launch of the cycling event planned for August. We met some people in Milltown who offered to bring us around the route which included the road from Milltown to the Hand and someone happened to mention the nearby wind farm so we took a detour to have a look. To say that it fits into the surrounding area is the same as saying a plantation of palm trees would be appropriate at the North Pole. We were also told that many of the locals have submitted objections to the proposal and I can see why.

I stated somewhere else that Mount Callan is protected under the habitats directive but now that I have actually seen the area I cannot believe that it has been chosen by Clare County Council as appropriate. We were also told that it used to be classified as visually vulnerable by Clare CC until the wind farm applications started arriving.

I have no doubt that Clare CC will approve the application so I only hope An Bord Pleanala will take into account the concerns of the people who actually live in the area who have submitted objections.

Incidentally, I can't comment on the noise from the turbines because only one of them was slightly turning - apparently there has been practically no wind for the month of February!

Made up story. Must be the Orangeman.