John ESB will not let you sell or give any excess to the grid. There in lies the problem.

John that’s not the whole picture. Seai may offer grants but the Esb hasn’t evolved enough to support micro generation. Nor does it seem to want to. Our state bodies prefer working with business. Subsidies keep industry afloat and the paperwork gets done.
Not good enough. Put the money into community energy!

ESB are closing the electricity buy back scheme, so the excess you create will go to waste.

It makes absolutely no sense.

If you don’t understand electricity it makes sense.

I could write for hours why you are wrong.

1) building millions of solar panels will release huge quantities of co2 emissions and pollution and acid lakes in China.

2) selling solar or wind power back to Grid is useless. The back up plant are already running inefficiently as it is.

3) eroi of solar is next to useless in UK. As David McKay said you would be better off without any solar or wind in UK …same pretty much applies here

Solar panels will create huge problems. Not a solution at all.

We looked into solar energy to provide hot water in our new build extension (not completed yet). SEAI gave us some idea of the price and the grants available. Several did not come back to me with a quote despite the promises and the one who did gave me a price which was roughly what SEAI told me was average for the size of my extension PLUS the grant which I could claim back. The grant should have come off the price not added it on so I could reclaim it. Good old rip off Ireland is alive and well.

I think we need to do both. The government (in common with governments across the world) already subsidises dirty energy – they now need to transfer that big time to solar energy – with the will we could have stuff they have in other European countries – eg the tops of bus shelters in bus stations all solar panels, even pathways with solar panels, every large factory or supermarket should be forced by legislation to have their entire roof full of solar panels.

They need to up the funding available for home insulation (the low hanging fruit) and also solar panels, and people need to stop blocking stuff like Dun Laoghaire Rathdown being stopped in their plan to insist all new build would be built to a ‘passive energy’ standard (ie house has an environment where more or less no heating is needed). The result will be a future-proofed country energy-wise (not dependent on a volatile Middle East), cleaner air and a reduction in asthma (we have among the highest rates in the world) and a future for our children that will still be difficult but not completely catastrophic – as we will be playing our role to avert the very worst effects of climate change.

Think about it – with solar the input (the sun) is always free and infinite – unlike oil or gas.

People should know also that if you are a low income home owner you can get your home insulated for free under the Warmer Home scheme that the Greens brought in.

“Subsidies keep industry afloat….” The idea is good but with our small population import substitution on manufacturing things like solar panels or goods already made cheap in China is a non-runner.
The government would be better off subsidising growing Irish vegetables instead of pretending that solar energy is going to save us money.

Totally there used to be incentives but they were removed. At present you can’t even sell back to the grid. It’s utterly ridiculous and short sighted.

The only thing that the Greens brought in was Carbon Tax, which cost us more to heat our homes.

A couple of weeks of sunshine and everybody thinks of solar panels, as if you could store sunshine. When it rains we think of rainwater harvesting and when it is windy we think about turbines.
There is no magic formula to store renewable energy other than to use some of this renewwable hydrostatic energy to pump water into reservoirs located in the hill and use gravity to power turbines when the water is released.back down again.
If we want reusable energy we need to start thinking about ancient Greek Archimedes.type scientific priciples of engineering and how kinetic energy was used before the invention of electricity. We obviously threw the baby out with the bath water when electricity was provided in this country.

6 12

As of 2012.
The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
Solyndra ($535 million)*
Beacon Power ($43 million)*
Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
SunPower ($1.2 billion)
First Solar ($1.46 billion)
Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
Amonix ($5.9 million)
Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
Abound Solar ($400 million)*
A123 Systems ($279 million)*
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
Johnson Controls ($299 million)
Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
ECOtality ($126.2 million)
Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
Range Fuels ($80 million)*
Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
GreenVolts ($500,000)
Vestas ($50 million)
LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
Navistar ($39 million)
Satcon ($3 million)*
Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.
research provided by Michael Sandoval

We could indeed install solar panels and wind generatorsat our homes ,but then,like the attempted to do in Spain,our “government” would want to tax us for doing it , perhaps for environmental or conservation purposes??

They would say that, but it’s to keep big companies in business and the ordinary man paying for everything. We are seen as economic units, not human beings and we vote for the guys that protect big business not us.

Spain lost 2.2 real jobs for every ‘green’ one created, there’s no such thing as a free lunch and if you waste money on subsidies then this is the outcome.

Go off grid and STOP using fossil fuels then

Let us know how you get on if you can get enough energy to turn on your laptop

Imagine getting all that subsidy and going bankrupt.

Renewables should be illegal

Chris, the Green Party brought in the Warmer Homes scheme that exists to this day and has insulated the homes of thousands of low income home owners entirely for free.

You may not wish to pay carbon tax, but I am sorry to say that for the sake of our children’s future the polluter must pay.

The entire world is forging ahead with sustainable energy, and we should not get left behind. Your view is a bit out of date I am afraid. Last year, for the first time, renewables accounted for a majority of new electricity-generating capacity added around the world. The average global cost of generating electricity from solar panels fell 61 percent between 2009 and 2015. It is the way forward. If we wish to have a future for our grandchildren, renewable energy is the ONLY way forward.

Owen, you are again making up stuff about the Irish electricity system. The amount of back up plant depends on the largest plant or interconnector importing, not renewables. IMHO, industrial solar should get the same fixed price as onshore wind is getting, whilst domestic should get a 20% premium (as it can reduce the costs of network investment). Alan.

Renewables provided 63% of Portugal’s energy last year. There are great strides in technology to store solar energy. It’s a free and inexhaustible source of energy.

The idea is that the government would subsidise clean energy – not tax it!

Chris, there is little need to store energy up to the point of 50% renewables. After that a bit of investment in pumped storage will see us right. Alan.

That’s for hot water.

Let’s do both.
With the solar farms the cost of residential / commercial roof top solar in Ireland will be more expensive. As the solar farms bring economise of scale to the market. By doing all the options the consumer will pay less for solar electricity.

The UK have installed 8GW of solar in the past five years, with the same damp grey climate. It works and it’s getting cheaper by the week.

Alan, back up plant have to run inefficiently because of wind.

Not sure what your point is.

http://euanmearns.com/co2-emissions-variations-in-ccgts-used-to-balance-wind-in-ireland/

Sales of Diesel Generators expected to rise in Western Europe

http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2016/05/sales-of-diesel-generators-expected-to.html

This is because of renewables, efficient back up plant no longer viable so TSOs turning to diesel

Hi Owen, Euan’s paper seems to have a fatal flaw…it seems to assume that the Irish system is based on gas and wind. As I am sure you know, we have lots of dirty Peat and dirty coal on our grid. Wind typically displaces gas, leaving the average CO2 intensity of the remaining fleet obviously higher (as a greater proportion is Peat and coal). If you want me to review anything else, please email me. Thanks, Alan.

The 63% figure is mostly hydro-power, not solar. Solar is less than 1%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Portugal

In 2013, solar power was responsible for 0.58% of the total electricity produced. Portugal also increased its solar capacity by 25% when comparing to 2012.

A large photovoltaic power project, the Serpa solar power plant, was completed in Portugal, one of Europe’s sunniest areas.[12] The 11 megawatt plant covered 150 acres (0.61 km2) and employs 52,000 PV panels. The panels are raised 2 metres off the ground allowing grazing to continue. The plant provides enough energy for 8,000 homes and saves an estimated 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Not far from there, Moura Photovoltaic Power Station is under construction. With more than 376,000 solar modules, it will have an installed capacity of 62MWp when finished. The first stage of construction is scheduled for completion in 2008. A solar panel factory is also being built in the city of Moura, where there are plans to build a research lab.

Portugal has the second largest photovoltaic power station in the world, which was completed in December 2008. The complex, called Amareleja photovoltaic power station, covers an area of 250-hectare. The 46-megawatt solar power plant produces enough electricity for 30,000 homes and saves more than 89,383 tons a year in greenhouse gas emissions. Also in production since January 2007, the Serpa solar power plant with an installed capacity 11MW, covers an area of 60-hectare, produces enough energy for 8,000 homes and saves more than 30,000 tons a year in greenhouse gas emissions. These solar parks are approximately 30 km apart.

@Little Diddy – just stop. I build passive, low-energy and NZEB buildings for a living. You’re waffling. Solar subsidies have failed in UK and Germany, and here ESB cancelled the only feed in tariff there was. The key is better buildings that use less of it in the first place. And those SEAI houses you mention were not done for free: they were paid for by the taxpayer. There is no ‘free’ in energy.

Does solar need subsidy ? Every other country in the world has subsidised it surely we would be better importing it and subsiding new technology like tidal harnessing.

We don’t get enough sunshine, we would need to deploy 1000s of acres of solar panels to capture enough energy to be viable with current technology. So our energy bills would have to be increased even more, just like it was to facilitate the appalling wind farms that blight the countryside now. Bio fuel would be cheaper.

Do we really have to replicate the renewables scam here? There is enormous profit if you move in the right circles, In the UK wealthy landowner Sir Reginald Sheffield gets round £600,000 a year from wind-farm subsidies, he just happens to be Cameron’s father-in-law. I wonder who will be the big players here?

Stop lying.

Gas and oil do not receive a subsidy.

The govt gets hundreds of millions every year out of oil.

Wind is a net cost in hundreds of millions.

Greens will lie and then lie again to fool gullible uneducated people about renewable scam.

Biofuels are a scam aswell.

The use more energy than they ever generate.

Renewables are a temporary scam.

Eventually people will have to realise that nuclear is the only solution.

Always beware of people selling things that sound too good to be true.

I agree Owen, I’m just pointing out it would still be cheaper than solar. Nuclear is indeed the future, we just need to get over the hysteria surrounding it.

Not true. About 3,000 acres would supply us with 5% of our electricity needs. To put that is perspective, each year about 15,000 acres of agricultural land is permanently converted into forestry. Land availability is not an issue.

Brendan we looked into it when building 2 years ago. The technology just isn’t good enough yet. Maybe in another 5-10 years they will pay off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Brendan, just like we all paid treble the amount of car tax that other countries are paying to reduce carbon emissions and then, after we were held to ransom for owning a car that was over 1.ltr all the money we paid, €439 Million was taken out of Local Government Funds and handed in its entirety to Irish Water to squander on consultants. One good nuclear power station is what we need.

We do not need nuclear power and most of Europe is going in the opposite direction – full tilt for renewable energy. Nuclear power is viciously expensive to build and considering we have not done enough to avert some of the bad effects of climate change (there is that tricky 50-100 years’ time lag even if we stopped all emissions right now – which obviously we cannot do anyway)… considering then that we are guaranteed some pretty catastrophic and unknown climate change from what we have already emitted, could you really guarantee the safety of a nuclear power plant? If we continue not doing enough to keep global warming down, it will (as all the experts say and as seems obvious) lead to economic and social breakdown, breakdown of food production worldwide, massive migration of starving people, and conflict and wars for diminishing resources… in that situation, nuclear plants will be vulnerable to attack and they might not have anybody to look after them – an unthinkable prospect for the world. In addition, they rely on water and have to be near water, and with climate change likely drastically to affect water sources, another reason not to go nuclear. Solar energy on individual houses will be a good idea if things get really bad later in the century…

While Germany’s installed solar and wind energy may be able to get fairly close to fulfilling total electricity demand for a few minutes in rare instances that weather and demand conditions are just right, their share of total primary energy is still depressingly measly. Die Welt puts it all in true perspective:

Despite billions in subsidies, ‘renewable energies’ wind and sun covered only 3.7% of Germany’s primary energy needs last year.”
HT Pierre Gosselin.

Things are going to be tough in the next 5yrs so never mind the next century. A century from now we won’t have the same issues of a masked recurrence of centenary sad arse ness in post modernist mediocrity where we are of nostalgia and heritage and old art instead of making a new aesthetic and cultural shift. We are the beautiful past in digitally re-enhanced techni-colour cinematic spectacle and bizarre window to that period but we need the Progressive Democrates on Arts and one Fianna Fáil spokes person for the arts significance in a few major projects.. they don’t really seem to get that the vision of Ireland is something besides all those things like a new horizons of Windmills which look great in my opinion indeed but the arts seem non existent and on a large international platform of being more current and where we have technology and design for their own sake. A new vision of Ireland is a new visual representation of Ireland in something beyond drama in film which I love and I can appreciate the importance of. A new look for Europe so we can look down our nose of Europe at America. They are slightly sad ironic hippy era effort in their being consumed by Nuclear energy. Slow change transition for them now. Difficult to make up for being swamped by the amount of plants they have even with all their efforts in Wind and Solar Power. It is a very off the grid culture in some instances and it gets a bad image at times. Like people might associate some wind farm effort as cult hippy havens. We might have to high tail it out of here . 2020 is the realization or perfect vision as associated. The great fantastical reality realization, I ain’t saying lets take acid and get naked and pretend we have xray vision. We are ten years and 30yrs behind in some areas of interest to be exploited

A society can only enjoy Art with huge resources of cheap energy intensive fuel sources.

You need to read up on EROI.

http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2015/01/wind-energy-wasteful-use-of-resources.html

Otherwise, you have to go back to subsistence living with little time for art

We are not at Peak Oil, we are at Peak Stupidity

Two years is a long time in the solar industry. Look again

Did you factor in the cost of storage of the radioactive waste David? Maybe we should just drop it in the Irish Sea.

Regular fission is a good option. As far as I’m aware thorium plants have not been invented yet. Fusion is decades away from commercial application. The waste from all European plants is buried in the Irish Sea already you fools in cellefield wales. The by products can be used in traveling wave reactors when they come around. Modern gen 3 reactors are ultra safe and quite expensive as a result. A combo of solar wind, an nuclear is the likely desirable scenario. ( I’m skeptical of the technology in using waves or tidal power, we’ll see). There is this hysterical fear of nuclear power. There have been three major accidents in history. Chernobyl was a gen1 Soviet glorified science experiment in which the accident was human error (modern plants are automated). The idiots decided to do an unauthorized test of the back up generators for the cooling system. So they brilliantly they switched iff the main generators and the back ups failed. What followed was not a nuclear explosion but a steam explosion ionized by radioactive particles. Fukushima I think was very early gen 2 but may be gen1 and it took an earthquake followed by a tsunami and a series of really unlikely events for the many safeties to fail.

Thorium reactors can destroy plutonium and don’t produce any which is why they fell out of favour with military-minded governments and the story of LFTR is very interesting from an engineers point of view. Thorium reactors can be tuned to control what they consume or produce.

In France they recycle 80% of their nuclear waste.

They have cheapest and cleanest electricity in Europe

@Mack

Doesn’t really matter that they destroy Plutonium seeing as Thorium reactors also have by-products that can be used in nuclear weapons. Not sure why the military minded would be against that…??

Many medical devices are radioactive enough to make dirty bombs from so lets not get hysterical about the subject. Without spending ages explaining this for the benefit of lay- people the military use of thorium reactors is NOT effective as the more conventional use of uranium in it’s various form is already in the hands of rogue states and Thorium reactors would not be their choice of weapons

Thorium reactor technology is already 80% completed and the Chinese have a timeline for 2020 for the first reactor in place to resolve all their pollution generated power,, usual scaremongering thrown out by skeptics, but people should read first before opening the fingers on the keyboard . THERE is NO weapon grade material available from a Thorium reactor IF not wanted ,, so why would we generate IT IN iRELAND ,, ???? From agreement to planning design , to begin building is a 10 year issue so plan now for Tomorrow . 1 plant in Ireland solves all and with car technology going battery power and self storage systems like TESLA in homes we are on verge of complete self automation using electricity in all facets of life so WHY do we suffer the whims of Saudi despots or large burden (non)renewable energy TAX parasitic companies where we destroy our landscape with wind-farms / extra costs infrastructure / a joke of Solar Power proposed by more idiotic subsidy seeking companies ??? Time to grow up people ,, NUCLEAR is the True future for self dependency and freedom from despots !

Malachi – good idea in principal. But we don’t have the luxury of waiting decades – or hundreds – of years for fusion to work.

@Jho Harris. Here is a thought for you. Solar panels can be placed on roofs. They don’t have to be taken huge amounts of country side. Imagine a situation where every roof had a solar panel and away of storing the electricity produced.

That’s the problem Thomas, there is no economical way of storing the energy. Until someone develops a revolutionary new way to store the energy it will always have to be subsidised by conventional energy sources. Better to fund this research instead.

Well John you’re wrong there the tesla powerwall is a very economical and efficient way of storing the energy. They are not that big and they look well. If you want to put them out of sight you could fit a few very nicely under a stairs or somewhere else out of the way. Oh and newer solar panels are very efficient they don’t even need direct sunlight which ideal for Irish weather.

From what I understand, the Tesla is too noisy to keep inside the house because of the cooling system.

Do you work for a dirty energy company? Why is every country investing heavily in renewable energy if it is so stupid and will never work? The fact is that it is working all over the world. It is not only the future, but the present, and we should not get left behind.

One problem with renewables is that they all produce less value for consumers than they cost in resources.

Yes Germany are investing heavily in coal plants, so are Poland and Holland, as is China

Despite investing 100s of billions in renewables, Europe’s CO2 emissions have gone up.

“in 2008 everybody was investing in property, we should invest more in property”

The Energy Return on Investment is so bad for wind and solar, they use alot of energy, mostly fossil fuel and release huge quantities of CO2 in a short period of time.

http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2015/01/wind-energy-wasteful-use-of-resources.html

Theres a reason oil and coal took off, their EROI was huge.

Nuclear is even better so we should be looking at that, no crap renewables that cant even replace a power station

You guys are sad – CO2 emissions are not going up because some countries are investing in renewable energy – now that makes not sense at all! Why should Ireland lag behind when it is simply NOT an option to keep burning fossil fuels – ALL of the credible scientific community the world over tells us that this will destroy a liveable planet for future generations – STOP standing in the way of what is the moral imperative of our generation.

They’re not investing : quite the opposite. Multinationals are, as grants and subsidies make a profit.

Your tongue is in your cheek, I suspect, Ger.

Someone else pays. The cornerstone of socialism.

No room for his tongue to get to his cheek, his foot is permanently in the way.

I know someone on the west coast with a “25kW” commercial turbine. On its best day it has produced 5kW. ….

Little Diddy….just stop reading the BS put out by the AGW/ACC industry. Climate Change is a fact and has been since the Earth formed. Out planet heats and cools cyclically and damn all you can do to change that. It’s all about fear-mongering, control and profit for some. One day, the planet will be a barren rock. Fact. We are sitting in range of a very large thermonuclear reactor, or Sun, and it has a finite, but long, life before it goes out with a bang.

Owen, your paper on EROI seems more fiction than fact. Nuclear is the most expensive (not the cheapest), while applying this “buffering” factor to renewables is ridiculous. The use of renewables in Ireland shows that wind can be a significant source at no/low additional cost. I prefer the metric LCOE, which shows wind, gas and coal to be competitive (with Peat, Nuclear and Offshore wind as expensive). In Ireland (RoI) from 2011 to 2013, based on CER figures, the average revenue to generators was €98 per MWh, whilst wind generators only got €82 per MWh. Alan.