Emergency power plan for ESB North Wall station to cost €508m over five years
Gordon Deegan
The proposal to provide temporary emergency power at ESB’s North Wall power station in Dublin to avoid blackouts is set to cost over €500 million over a five-year period.
In September, An Bord Pleanála approved the 200 MW temporary power generator at the ESB’s existing North Wall generation station on the southern side of Alexandra Rd within Dublin Port.
Now, the contract tender award notice for the 200MW North Wall emergency power generator has stated that the Eirgrid plc contract with ESB Generation & Wholesale Markets over a five-year period has a value of €508.7 million and a contract value of €357 million if the emergency power is required for only three years.
Generator
The ESB has confirmed that it is aiming to have the emergency power generation online in the final quarter of next year.
Documents lodged with the planning application warned that “if the proposed development does not proceed, it is possible that power outages could occur in the absence of the proposed development unless emergency generation is provided at some other location due to the forecasted system demand".
The emergency power plant is designed to start quickly and will run when electricity demand is high and generation capacity from other sources available on the system is at risk of not meeting demand.
In a separate boost to Government plans to avoid blackouts, An Bord Pleanála has ruled that an application for a 50MW gas fired temporary power generation plant at Energia’s Huntstown power station in north Dublin doesn’t require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
The requirement to have to carry out an EIS would have slowed down the process in formally putting plans before An Bord Pleanala.
Forecasted shortfall
The appeals board inspector’s report stated that the proposed development is required “in response to the national emergency relating to a forecasted shortfall in electricity supply for the next five winters”.
The report states that the forecasted shortfall for the next number of winters are predicted as follows: 260MW for 2022/2023, rising to 1050MW in 2023/24 and 1850MW in 2024/25.
The report states that the shortfalls “are expected due to unexpected generator outages and delays in delivery of new gas fired generation capacity; limited interconnector support; poor plant performance and cold weather fronts with record peak electricity demand”.
The report states: “The proposed development is therefore a critical temporary emergency power generation and transmission asset, required as a direct response to addressing and mitigating national risk to power disruption, supply and demand.”
The Huntstown emergency generator will be operational for a minimum of three years and a maximum of five years and will only be run when the system is in alert or emergency state.
Documents lodged with An Bord Pleanála anticipate that the temporary power generator will run from summer 2023 to late 2027.
The proposed development will run only when required, typically equating to four hours per day or 1,460 hours per year.
The board inspector in the case, Máire Daly concluded that an EIS is not required as the proposal would not be likely to have significant effects on the environment.
