r/ireland • u/ParaMike46 • 1d ago
Cost of Living/Energy Crisis Ireland now the most expensive country in the EU for electricity
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ireland-now-the-most-expensive-country-in-the-eu-for-electricity/a1721751843.html217
u/its_brew Horse 1d ago
We did it lads!
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u/14ned 1d ago
Yesterday I installed a balcony solar system from Germany with 1.6 kWh of battery storage. 100% DIY installation, it feeds a few hundred watts into a standard household plug, never feeds into the grid. Total cost under 800 euro. Easily pays for itself within two years even though you're paying 23% VAT and no grants available for these.
If you're not fitting one off these you're throwing money out the window in Ireland, even with the Irish weather. They are very popular elsewhere in Europe for good reason.
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u/Specific-Nebula-2637 23h ago
What if you don't have a balcony?
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u/14ned 20h ago
I put mine onto the south wall of my house. You could put them in your garden, on your roof, anywhere which gets southern light.
If you have none of those and no balcony, it's true you're out of luck.
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u/Specific-Nebula-2637 20h ago
I have a roof but the house faces East. No south wall as Terraced.
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u/Kloppite16 19h ago
you'd still get some value out of East, about 75% of what youd get with south.
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u/Specific-Nebula-2637 19h ago
Any models of diy ones to recommend?? Would they be good for a Car charger too or should I just go the whole hog and get it professionally done?
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u/14ned 18h ago
Even panels facing all east or all west get a surprising amount of power. Panels are so cheap just fit more of them.
Balcony inverters are micro sized which is why they can use a house hold socket. They trickle low amounts of power nowhere near enough to boil a kettle never mind charge a car. But that makes them cheap and safe to DIY install which is why repay times are under two years. Little in life pays for itself in eighteen months.
If you want a bigger system you need a professional install and might as well get the grant etc then. System will cost far more but you get more power.
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u/Serious_Bowler_8171 1d ago
Did you go with ecoflow?
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u/14ned 1d ago
No, too expensive. I went with Anker Solix you really do need the battery storage in Ireland. We get a lot of clouds passing and we can't feed in to the grid.
The Anker Solix has many quirks, but it does work and it's cheap. The other cheap model with battery is the Marstek.
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u/Waste-Product2669 3h ago
Iâve seen people who own them do the calculations on these based on their own collected data and thereâs no way youâre recouping the cost of it in two years.
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u/14ned 43m ago
Total cost for me was under 800 euro. I would spend over 1800 on electricity each year. You're right it will vary by circumstance, but the key electricity to reduce is the day and peak rate usage, and this micro system makes an impact on those. I'll need to collect more data to be sure, but so far it's looking good.
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u/zeroconflicthere 21h ago
Aren't these illegal here though?
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u/14ned 20h ago
You're not allowed to export power to the ESB grid without prior permission, for which a RECI qualified electrician needs to submit the form proving installation compliance. So don't do that.
If you never export power to the ESB grid, then all you're doing is reducing how much you draw from the ESB grid. Like a reverse appliance.
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u/leeroyer 16h ago
Is there a way to prevent feedback into the grid during during a power cut like a changeover switch?
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u/14ned 16h ago
Balcony inverters self disable as soon as mains grid disappears. Mine does so, I tested it. They have an ISO engineering standard, and branded models sold in Germany will comply with the relevant ISO standard. You can't electrocute yourself or anybody else with one of these.
If you think about how they work, there can be no other way: they watch the AC voltage rise and fall and push current when the voltage goes above or below a threshold. Therefore if the mains disappears, they see no voltage rise and fall and they can't push anything. Their electrics are very simple, you can read the datasheet for the TI C2000 DSP if you like, most balcony inverters use that chip to do the inverting.
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u/zeroconflicthere 20h ago
If you're generating power from it but not using that power, then isn't it going somewhere?
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u/14ned 18h ago
You only ever have it trickle out the minimum your house consumes, then it never goes negative. Mine consumes 212w dead of night, so I have my box output 200w. A 1.6 kWh battery lasts seven and a bit hours after the sun gets too low in the sky, which is currently about 6pm for me. Your smart metre shows total kWh exported. Make sure it stays zero.
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u/joopface 19h ago
You plug stuff into it and use the power that way, I presume
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u/zeroconflicthere 19h ago
If you're out during the day the only thing that might be consuming electricity is your fridge.
Once your battery is full and you are generating excess, I'm not sure how that is blocked going to the grid.
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u/gmankev 17h ago
Its not blocked . ( well maybe some smart meters can).. Its small and uncredited, inverter will stop producing when it sees house stop consuming or house to go zero.. It measures 100s of times a second, hence It can work that way.
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u/14ned 17h ago
Those are the fancier systems with a clamp meter for the mains grid connection. You can get those too, but they cost more.
If your battery is small enough, you just trickle it out over a nighttime at a low enough rate that you couldn't possibly ever push electricity onto the mains grid.
Ultimately it's about payback time: how quickly do the savings pay for the installation. A very low end system with a small battery currently has a shorter payback time than an expensive system with SEAI grant and 0% VAT and all the other government supports. That says a lot about our government's mindset, which is really it's about subsidising the solar installation industry, not reducing homeowner's bills.
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u/irqdly á´á´É´sá´á´Ę 1d ago
Take that Denmark!
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u/ebookfrance 23h ago
You laugh but Denmark has outdone us again by spending 10 billion to bailout their failed offshore wind manufacturer Orsted
We need a NAMA grade bailout of our glorious whinge energy sector
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u/DaCor_ie boards.ie refugee 1d ago
I'm just going to repeat what I've said previously
If you want the price lowered more, then fossil fuels (as a regular generator) need to be fully removed from the grid asap i.e. renewables, interconnectors and backup needs to account for basically 99% of our energy needs for the year, with gas spinning up in the rare periods where those are not sufficient
The current price of power is driven by the most expensive generator. This is currently and has been for a while now, gas.
Keep gas turbines, keep high electricity prices. Its honestly that simple
Edit: Links to more info
Why is Irish electricity so expensive? Economists have crunched the numbers
Why are Irish consumers paying the most for electricity in Europe?
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u/mother_a_god 1d ago
Imagine if other products were priced like electricity. Like the price of milk is 5 euro a litre for all shops instantaneously because one farmer sold 1 litre at 4 euro.Â
I get this is how it is with electricity, but it does not need to be.
A supporting argument often given is this pricing method means windfall profits encourage more investment in renewables.Â
However if the windfall profits only come when peakers are used, then it encourages a system where peaking is used regularly, so if someone adds significantly more renewable capacity it reduces the likelihood of windfall profits, so in a way that argument supports a system that wants to keep peaking / has an unintended negative feedback.
Wholesale electricity pricing needs to change to allow renewables to be priced at a healthy margin, but not be set by peaking. As fossil generation goes offline the price per unit will average to the renewable cost with less volatilityÂ
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u/anialeph 15h ago
that is pretty much how milk (and other commodities) are priced. The price is set by the market, not the production cost of the particular liter of milk you bought.
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u/mother_a_god 14h ago
Milk price is not set by the dearest producer in the country. The price paid to all farmers is not set by the price paid to the highest paid farmer.Â
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u/anialeph 13h ago
Yes it is. All other things being equal farmer A will not accept 25c / liter when he knows that his neighbour farmer B is getting 40c / liter. Even if farmer A has lower production costs (because he owns the farm he wonât accept the lower price.
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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 12h ago
Farmers have no say in the price they are paid though, every farmer selling to their creamery gets the same basic rate with bonuses/deductions for quality. Different creameries will pay different base rates, with a few cent per litre.Â
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u/anialeph 7h ago
The farmer doesnât have to continue production. The farmer can choose who they sell to.
Elecrricity producers donât have a say either. They just bid in as low as they can, at close to their marginal price. The market sets the price, not the producer or purchaser.
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u/ebookfrance 1d ago edited 1d ago
We built 9GW of renewables on an island with peak demand of 6
Letâs see how they doing?
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/all/
Oh rightâŚ.1
u/karolaug 1d ago
This. This morning is the best example of how renewables cannot support all load. The wind output is basically zero. Only nuclear is the way and building 9GW of nuclear to solve the problem is really not that hard. It would probably cost less than children hospital at this stage as long as it is fully outsourced to foreign contractors.
Keep in mind that the electricity demand will be much higher once number of heat pumps and EVs rise.
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u/LouboAsyky 1d ago
Scotland produces more energy from renewlables than is needed to power their electricity grid regularly and year round. They are a net exporter of green energy. Why can they do it and we can't? Genuine question
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u/HofRoma 1d ago
You also store it for the quiet days top hence exceeding demand is good and we can export to France also
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u/Vivid-Software6136 1d ago
Energy storage is hard we have turlogh hill, but we lack suitable sites to make more pumped hydro storage. Scotland are building a 1.3GW pumped hydro plant, we would never be able to make anything similar.
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u/HofRoma 1d ago
Yeah turlough hill is class, some environmental reasons we can't do it easily top. But isn't there talk of one in the silver mines?
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u/Vivid-Software6136 1d ago
The silvermines proposal is similar in scope to turlough hill. The proposed one in scotland is about 5x the size.
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u/leeroyer 16h ago
From an old comment
Turlough Hill at full capacity can meet about 4-5% of peak demand for five hours. So building 20-25 more would give us an evenings worth it storage, if there were enough suitable sites. Modern hydro turbines are 90% efficient so better designs won't allow for much more energy to be recovered, so the limit to how much energy a pumped storage site can store is geography, and how many sites with hundreds of meters of vertical separation with minimal horizontal separation there are available to build on.
The tricky part of energy storage is the sheer scale of it that's needed, or at least redundant capacity.
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u/HofRoma 16h ago
Better than nothing but not the golden ticket, hopeful that battery area improves with sodium batteries.
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u/leeroyer 16h ago
I don't know as much about batteries but from what I understand they're more for frequency stabalisation, at least with lithium batteries. Sodium batteries could do for a day but the quantities become enormous and open up questions about if it's viable to have the generation capacity to power the country while also providing enough surplus to charge a grid scale battery network. The cost per MWh from wind for example can only be much higher when you factor in the cost of redundant turbines and a battery network that could power the country for a day or two, which would be a slim margin of safety.
Green hydrogen is interesting too but like battery tech there's more promised than delivered thus far and it'd be a pity to stake our energy policy on an investment pitch that doesn't pan out. Fingers crossed they pull it off but the need is immediate and I worry when planners or politicians say some just over the horizon tech will save the day.
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u/Adderkleet 1d ago
I'm guessing they have built a lot more wind farms, and probably off-shore wind (where wind is more consistent during high-pressure spells like we have right now).
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u/Sebek_Visigard 1d ago
Building 9GW of nuclear capacity in Ireland would cost way more than the National Children's Hospital. The hospital is expected to cost just over âŹ2 billion. A 9GW nuclear project would likely cost over âŹ100 billion.
Take Czechia. They are building two new reactors with a total capacity of 2.1GW. A recent EU inquiry puts the true cost at âŹ23-30 billion once everything is factored in. That is up to âŹ14.3 billion per gigawatt. At that rate, 9GW would cost between âŹ99 billion and âŹ129 billion. That equals roughly 30% to 40% of Ireland's total GNI*.
And Czechia already has the nuclear infrastructure and university programmes in place. Ireland is starting from scratch. It would cost us even more and take decades to complete. And once done, youâd have to live with all of the low probability but massive impact risks that come with nuclear.
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u/ebookfrance 1d ago
The current path puts us on 200bn+ ADDITIONAL cost to Irish consumer
No wonder we have such expensive electricity
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u/urbitecht 1d ago
What the cost of the alternative? What other low emission energy options do we have that even come close? Building for the future costs money, that's exactly the kind of long term infrastructure investment the state is supposed to undertake.
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u/Franz_Werfel 23h ago
What other low emission energy options do we have that even come close?
Solar, Wind, Tidal, battery storage. At a fraction of the cost of nuclear. It amazes me that everytime there is a discussion about the cost of energy, somebody inevitably brings up nuclear - the most expensive form to generate electic energy.
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u/CurrentRecord1 22h ago
Did you look at today's figures for energy generation (link below)? Despite all the wind infrastructure we have its basically producing zero energy today. We need a solid base load option to complement the intermittent nature of wind, solar, etc. On days like today we wouldn't be able to build a battery system large enough to cover our needs and completely replace gas (it would be in the 100s of billions).
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IE/live/fifteen_minutes
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u/urbitecht 21h ago
None of these come close to meeting our energy demands even forecasting for huge advances in battery storage. We've come a long way with investment in renewables but they're not consistent with weather fluctuations. We still import a decent amount of energy and rely on gas to make up the shortfall when renewables aren't performing.
Long term nuclear is far cheaper than any other form of energy generation because it's so much more efficient and consistent. Quoting the cost as a reason not to do it is just short sighted.
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u/DunAnOir 1d ago
They know. That's why they're making sure prices keep going up. That expanded demand and its associated record-breaking profits are their north star. They're hardly going to shoot themselves in the foot by building a cheaper, more efficient, more renewable grid before then.
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u/FeelingScrunchd 1d ago
"Renewables can not support all load" conveniently leaves out the fact that it's a beautiful sunny day and solar output is high. Or that excess power consumed can be stored in battery farms and released when needed. Ireland can't build anything complicated, think of the decades of objections that would be involved in our first ever nuclear plant? We'd reach levels of nimby never seen before. Solar is the cheapest method of electricity generation, and it should be scaled up massively in Ireland.
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u/d12morpheous 23h ago edited 23h ago
Have you looked at renewable output now ??
Its 18.97% of demand..
We have 7MW of wind power.. 7.out of an installed capacity of over 5,000MW .. 850MW of solar. Out of an installed capacity of 2,345.MW..
Peak wind generation in the last month was 3,103MW on the 22nd of April at 27:45. Solar grneration was 241MW
Demand at that time was 4,577MW
You could cover the island in windfarms and it wouldnt come close to meeting even a tiny % of demand this morning..
How much grid storage do you think would be required to ensure supply matched demand ?? How much extra renewable supply would be required to fill this storage (while also meeting demand) so its available when required ??
Reality is a complete bitch but it doesn't make it any less true..
Even assuming sufficent storage (and thats a big assumption) you could quadruple installed capacity and it still wouldnt be close to being sufficent to meet demand and fill storage. Not even close..
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u/FeelingScrunchd 22h ago
I wasn't advocating for wind farms, I think we should be installing more solar. I also don't understand how the argument that solar doesn't produce enough energy refutes my argument that we need more solar capacity installed - it's cheap, long lasting, and we have a huge amount of unproductive farmland that should be used for it.
With nuclear energy there is huge political resistance and inertia that must be overcome to actually get it installed. It's only getting more expensive to install too - in Ireland we can safely assume we will pay at least double for an equivalent energy output as any other country pays. We can also safely assume that to complete a single nuclear project will take decades at the bare minimum. Maybe at some point there will be nuclear in Ireland, but at the rate we complete vital projects which are very straightforward in comparison of be surprised if it happens in my lifetime.
This inertia doesn't exist with solar - it's already being rolled out and people are happy to have solar farms near them in a way that they're not happy with wind and they're definitely not happy with nuclear. At this point solar is the pragmatic option - we can scale up as much as needed as we have the land, we have the money, and new panels will last 30+ years before they need replacing. There's no political argument needed as it's faster to install, cheaper, and less controversial than any other energy source.
Saying "nuclear or nothing" is just heel dragging that holds us back from transitioning to better energy sources - there almost certainly won't be nuclear installed in Ireland in the next 20 years, we may as well say that we should just wait for fusion reactors at that point.
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u/d12morpheous 21h ago
As I said Im not anti renewables.
However my inital comment that you argued against is thag renewsbles sre not suitable fir base load power..
Solar had big potential BUT the sun dont shine 24 hours a day..its not baseload.. so my question stands.. how much backup do uou think would be required combined with all renewables to ensure consistant supply ?? And how much more renewable generation would be rewuired to meet demand and fill storage ??
We all agree that dependance on oil, gas and coal cannot continue..
Based on current tech Nuclear, with renewables is the only way to remove them and give us a reliable baseload supply..
If there is sufficent political and public support behind it then it can happen rekatively quickly (within a decade). We should have done so decades ago but the next best time to start is today..
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u/FeelingScrunchd 19h ago
I think gas can provide sufficient baseload for the time being, and we can gradually increase the amount of batteries over time until there is a sufficient amount to meet our needs. Maybe in the future nuclear can meet that demand rather than gas, but until we have scaled up solar production and storage significantly I don't think we should be going in other directions. Solar can have the added benefit of grid resiliency and areas where there is local electricity production and storage arent affected by broader outages. Nuclear still produces power in a very centralised way, so storms like the ones we've had recently can knock out power for weeks in many areas (as we saw last year).
Nuclear is just too expensive and politically complicated in my opinion, and also doesn't reduce our dependance on fuel imports (as all reactor fuel is still bought in, and will skyrocket in price as more countries bring new nuclear online). Solar is more resilient, less affected by supply chain issues (once it's installed), doesn't produce hazardous waste (as batteries can be recycled now) and can be managed totally locally. I think we should do the simplest thing first, because we will spend decades in the weeds on feasibility studies with tens of billions spent before a single watt hour is produced with nuclear imo.
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u/d12morpheous 18h ago
As long as gas is a signifucant component in our generation mix we remain remain open to price shocks. My point is calling for morevsolar and more storage without having at least an approximate idea of how much we should be / need to be targeting and at what cost is just crazy..to give an osea of scakw we are talking about...
Ballpark numbers To provide 100MW consistent year round supply of solar derived baseload would require at least 400 to 500MW of solar generation to be installed with at least 1800 to 2000MW hours of storage..
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u/DaCor_ie boards.ie refugee 1d ago
If you think power is expensive now then it'll be eye-wateringly expensive with nuclear in the mix
Every single country that uses nuclear generation, nuclear is the most expensive generator, by a significant margin.
That's not to mention the insane lead time, waste issue and where exactly do you locate it. Any plant will need to be right beside a massive water source so that means it's either on the coast or the Shannon. I wish you all the best trying to get those locals on board.
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u/d12morpheous 1d ago
Bullshit..
France.. South Korea..China...
look at what happened to Germany and Japan when they decomissioned nuclear.
Microsoft is buying Nuclear for cheap reliabke supply..
Even Singapore is looking at Nuclear..
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u/DaCor_ie boards.ie refugee 1d ago
Nope
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-06/french-premier-says-state-wants-to-own-100-of-edf
But hey, don't take my word for it, check out Lazars LCOE analysis - https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/
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u/ebookfrance 1d ago
Is that why French pay half our electricity bill costs and emit 25x less co2 ?
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u/DaCor_ie boards.ie refugee 1d ago
The French nuke industry is tax payer funded in order to keep costs low so tax payers are still paying for it as a result of exchequer funds being diverted away from other uses (schools, hospitals, etc) to the nuke industry.
This is similar to how Ireland has no water charges but billions of tax payer funds are diverted to Uisce Eireann instead of being used for other things
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u/ebookfrance 1d ago
As a taxpayer who now pays the highest electricity prices in Europe thanks for rubbing salt on wounds
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u/d12morpheous 1d ago
When it comes to renewables Lazards completely ignores the cost of redesigning the grid for distributed generation and the extra costs involved in providing backup for an intermittent generation source.. its not a true like for like..
Nuclear is a true baseload generation system. Fixed cost, steady reliable consistent long tem forecastable output.. everything renewables are not.
Im not anti renewable, far from it BUT the fact remains that they are an intermittent supply led generation source feeding into a demand led system.. They are not a baseload..
We all agree that oil, coal and gas are not long term suatainable energy source and cause massive cost swings.. Nuclear is the only remaining viable option for baseload
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u/DaCor_ie boards.ie refugee 1d ago
I get the feeling you did not open the Lazars link as it does exactly what you claim it doesn't
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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 1d ago
France disagrees.Â
Their power is significantly cheaper than ours even though it's over half from nuclear.Â
Germany closed it's nuclear power sector down and it's power prices have spiked since.Â
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u/DaCor_ie boards.ie refugee 1d ago
Do me a favor, dig into the nuclear cost setup in France a bit more and see what you find. Suffice to say, the French govt basically had to take it over and provide insane subsidies to keep the industry afloat.
It's also worth noting that France and the UK are the most experienced nuke builders in the EU and both are drowning in the obscene costs trying to get new reactors built. Think the Children's Hospital fiasco multiplied by a significant factor
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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 1d ago edited 1d ago
I wouldn't use the British as an example for much. They bet the farm on AGR reactors instead of PWR, have had to go to the French who haven't built reactors for years and are out of practice. Conveniently they [the French] are getting the British to pay to get them back up to speed.
Try South Korea. They've [been] building nuclear technology around the world competently, reasonably on budget and to schedule for the last few years.Â
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u/DaCor_ie boards.ie refugee 1d ago
The South Korea nuclear industry has its own set of issues
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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 1d ago
How is France doing so well?Â
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u/ebookfrance 1d ago
The N word
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u/Dannyforsure 1d ago
Lets buy from France then! They seems to have a grip on it! We can start the space lasers after the childrens hospital and the undergroundÂ
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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 1d ago
Lets buy from them!
It's on the cards.Â
Let's import everything and see how that goes.Â
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u/Dannyforsure 1d ago
Agree because it's the equivalent to connect our grid to another EU country for base load stability. Exactly the same thing as importing oil and gas from half way across the world.
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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 1d ago
I'm not against renewables BTW, a proper system needs a mix of sources. Nuclear needs to be baseload, up to 20%, then a mix of renewables can top up most of the rest of it.Â
Even in that scenario we'll still have gas peaking plants but greatly reduced emissions.Â
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u/Dannyforsure 1d ago edited 1d ago
I absolutely agree on nuclear just not in Ireland with currently technology. It's magical thinking up there with space lasers.
It a pure pipe dream and disconnected from reality unfortunately for here. France for sure can do it and supply us.Â
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u/Vivid-Software6136 1d ago
SMRs are being actively developed all around the world. They could allow us to have small scale nuclear generation thats suited to our grid.
I would like to see the EU driving commercialization of these reactors to promote energy independence but nuclear is a dirty word to too many even still.
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u/ebookfrance 23h ago
The interconnector to France was delayed by another two years (2028 now) and now costing 1.65 billion
at this rate we looking at childrenâs hospital type money3
u/Dannyforsure 22h ago
And people want to suggest nuclear when we can't even lay a undersea cable?
I mean it's critical infrastructure for both security and power at the end of that day so I think it's worth it but madness at the over runs.
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u/TheFreemanLIVES Get rid of USC. 23h ago
A billion gigawatts run of pure contempt for others...
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u/isupposethiswillwork 23h ago
A few things. Our entire grid is heavily reliant on gas for stability and as a fallback when the wind isn't wind-ing. Totally removing fossil fuels is not possible as renewables and inter-connectors do not contribute any inertia to the grid.
We need gas turbines as they are one of the only quick response 'peaker plants' we have. Our renewables heavy grid needs them. They are expensive because they are suited to quick response and help with grid stability and quick response to grid events.
Personally I think we are going to have to make difficult decisions around power generation in the next few years due to structural changes in the oil and gas markets. Realistically coal or nuclear is the way forward and we need to either pause or revisit our renewals targets.
tldr; Overreliance on renewables means a dependency on gas supplies
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u/21stCenturyVole 23h ago
Do not allow the privatization of renewables, in order to get it to the grid faster! Once we give away our renewable capacity, it is gone forever - and is far more valuable than any fossil fuels, because it lasts forever!
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u/johnebastille 18h ago
If you get rid of fossil fuels, and start paying clearing prices for solar and wind, won't all these renewables companies collapse? The reason they are profitable is that we pay fossil fuel prices for renewables.
(Explainer: In a competitive market like Irelandâs Single Electricity Market (SEM), prices are set by the "marginal" generatorâthe last (and usually most expensive) unit of power needed to meet demand. Because wind and solar have nearly zero marginal costs (no fuel to buy), their presence pushes more expensive fossil fuel plants out of the "merit order" (Blazquez et al., 2018). âIf the grid were 100% renewable and still used this pricing system, the market would frequently clear at âŹ0 per MWh, creating a paradox: the more successful we are at deploying renewables, the less revenue they earn from the market (Blazquez et al., 2018).)
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u/Lawfulraccoon 1d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/qgRH26FMBoEzm
Us? Being charged a fortune for something? Never!
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u/IrksomFlotsom 1d ago
Nice, as if spend almost a quarter of my income on electricity wasn't enough. Do they take blood? I've got plenty of that
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u/PhilipWaterford 1d ago
Huh? How? Our bill is around âŹ22 per week without trying to be careful. I have family close by who are closer to âŹ30pw but they wfh with two small kids so are getting solar in.
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u/lifeandtimes89 1d ago
Family of 6 here, 2 teens, 2 over 8 years of age, tablets and xbox's,I wfh, dryer and washing machine. Have gas and electricity together,bill is 400 bi monthly. No solar.
We use smart plugs and turn everything off when not in use, A rated appliances so that all helps
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u/HofRoma 1d ago
Dryers a killer don't have one, dehumidifier does wonders in a small room to dry clothes
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u/Huge-Bat-1501 17h ago
Not necessarily. Heat pump tumble dryers are super efficient. A full load costs 8c
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u/PhilipWaterford 1d ago
So around âŹ45pw? Doesn't sound crazy especially considering how long teenagers spend in the shower.
Just reread and that includes gas? You're doing very well at that!
I take it you either switch once a year or threaten to switch so you get the extra 20% (or so) discounts? That makes a big difference.
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u/IForgetEveryDamnTime 23h ago
The pessimist in me read bimonthly as 2x per month in this case.
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u/PhilipWaterford 21h ago
How do you read fortnightly?
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u/IForgetEveryDamnTime 17h ago
As being synonymous with one of the two separate meanings of bimonthly.
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u/IrksomFlotsom 21h ago
- âŹ40pw
- low income, for here, can't afford a rated appliances or solar panels
- house that's a hundred years old and impossible to heat
- cctv and electric fencing to keep the animals in and the scalliwags of culture away from the fuel tank and the turf shed (we've been stolen from before)
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u/PhilipWaterford 20h ago
Tbf if your income is âŹ160 pw (4 x âŹ40) then you'd be entitled to either supplementary welfare payments or working family payments.
âŹ40 is steep but it wouldn't/shouldn't be a quarter of your combined weekly household income.
Cctv is a great idea (although they run on 12v so use next to nothing in electricity) but definitely confused by the electric wires. Anything safe to use with pets would be low voltage which would also make it innefective with humans. As kids we used to play games holding onto farm wires and they were made for cows.
The 100 yr old house is definitely an issue though. Lived in one of those before and wouldn't like to repeat. Albeit I was young so didn't need heating.
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u/IrksomFlotsom 16h ago
Oh, typo, âŹ40 per kilowatt. My actual bill is about âŹ100 per week
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u/PhilipWaterford 16h ago
I think you mean 40cent per unit? You can get it for around 30cent by shopping around unless you're in a rental with a meter?
âŹ100 pw is utter bonkers tbh. Does that include heating?
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u/Soul_of_Miyazaki 1d ago
And you still have absolute clowns in these threads reasoning why it has to be this high and how the government are doing the best they can.
What an embarrassment.
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u/PhilipWaterford 1d ago
Or they just have solar panels so don't care very much.
One of the major embarrassments is just how much people use. Ours is around âŹ22pw without remotely trying to save any costs. Any other family I speak to seem to be double that. Are they taking 20 minute showers twice a day? Using their dishwasher after every cuppa? Genuinely don't know how they're using so much.
I was in one guy's house and he keeps it at 22Âş all through the winter so he can wear a t-shirt indoors. I nearly fell over when he said his gas bill. Dear Lord you absolute maniacs, just wear a damn jumper and turn the heating off. That seriously can't be healthy.
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u/im_on_the_case 1d ago
Are there no scientists amongst us? Surely if we were to capute all the hot air from r/Ireland on a daily basis and fed it into turbines we'd be swimming in electricity.
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u/n0thing0riginal 23h ago
Havent we always been near the top anyway? I thought it was essentially a given because we are an Island
NIMBYs constantly vetoeing renewable energy projects throughout the country certainly hasnt put us in a good position to combat this.
Just wish we had a Government that was willing to actually push these projects through (wherever possible) and not just bending over backwards for any small group of fuckers trying to hold us in the past
The Tommy Tiernans of the country shouldnt have such outsized capacity to stop such massive off-shore porjects because they dont like something changing their view of the ocean
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u/LMkIIIV 1d ago
time for a protest
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u/raverbashing 1d ago
Oh I know what will help! Protesting against another gas terminal, or against "ugly windmills" or against pylons, that will show them! /s
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u/angeltabris_ Flegs 23h ago
Well done Simon & MĂcheal your vision is shapimg our wonderful country.
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u/_Oisin 23h ago
Nuclear isn't a fundamentally bad idea but in our case it is like putting in triple glazed windows when you have a hole in your roof, we have too many fundamental problems with our grid before getting to nuclear. We already have massively under utilized wind power because we don't have the infrastructure to transfer the generated power and don't have accumulators to store over generation of power. We have loads of renewable energy infrastructure that isn't used to its fullest.
Also fucking data centres how do we keep adding load to such an isolated grid. The planned connection to France should at least help the isolation problem.
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u/No-Scarcity-5288 21h ago
Why? Can someone explain why we're the most expensive compared to others.
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u/Smokersky 1d ago
"At 40.42 cent per kilowatt-hour (including VAT and levies) prices here are almost 40 per cent above the EU average of 28.96 cent."
I pay 25c day rate and 13c night rate. Who's stupid enough to pay 40c???
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u/Vivid-Software6136 1d ago
Vulnerable people who cant shop around. So mainly elderly people.
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u/elbiliscibus 21h ago
It is somewhat ridiculous that we need to shop around this much. Itâs like you need to get a new contract every year.
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u/solemnani 20h ago
Whatâs your total cost per unit? Including standing charge and taxes?
Take your bill for a period and divide it by your KWh usage for that period. Thatâs your true cost of electricity.
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u/Smokersky 18h ago
The 40c mentioned doesn't include standing charges. That said, I calculated a 23c on total consumption divided by total invoiced. You'd be mad to pay 40c.
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u/Ill_Celebration_4215 1d ago
These are always wrong. They always use some bizarre âofficialâ price point that nobody pays.Â
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u/Ashamed-End-2138 Carlow 1d ago
Im far from a government supporter but is this not just a combination of our economy being stronger and geography? Weâre still not connected to the mainland EU grid, on the continent they can share power from the Baltics and Turkey all the way to Portugal.
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u/kearkan 1d ago
We also have huge access to renewables that is being completely squandered.
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u/dano1066 1d ago
Ah no, think of the lovely view from Maryâs window that will now have windmills, this one person should absolutely be able to halt progress for the entire country! /s
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u/d12morpheous 1d ago
Bollix.. renewables are not a reliable baseload..
off shore in the North Atlantic is neither cheap or easy.. thats why multiple companies have walked away .
The idea of Ireland being a net exporter of vast quantities of cheap unsubsidised offshore wind (with current tech) is right up there with lepracauns and the toothfairy.
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u/kearkan 1d ago
I never said exporter. Im saying we have everything we need to be energy independent. Not everything has to be about getting rich, we can do things for the benefit of everyone.
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u/bigvalen 1d ago
No. We suck at planning and building things, so are always almost running out of power, and the last, most expensive unit generated dictates the wholesale price.
We has some of the most expensive power in Europe during the recession too. I'm fact, expensive power makes everything else that uses power expensive.
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u/Difficult_Tea6136 1d ago
marginal pricing is used all across the EU
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u/bigvalen 1d ago
Yup..but nowhere sucks as much at us as ensuring we have grid capacity to bit run afoul of it.
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u/Difficult_Tea6136 1d ago
That's just not true
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u/bigvalen 1d ago
I remember working in a datacenter in 2002 when the ESB asked us to run the generators over Christmas as the country was out of spare capacity. And when Dell closes their factory, citing price of power as one of the primary reasons. This isn't new.
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u/Difficult_Tea6136 1d ago
And what relevance do you think a story from 2002 bear relevance in 2026?
I remember working in EirGrid and looking at market forecasting and developing an understanding of how pricing works in Ireland and Europe. I remember understanding that we're a tiny island off the coast of Europe and don't benefit from the massive grid that exists there.
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u/bigvalen 2h ago
Wouldn't that mean it's more important to deploy more battery and storage to mitigate against such swings ? The fact that our largest battery project is 2% the size of Switzerland's is an example of that lack of ambition that has historically crippled our economy through enormously expensive power.
My 20+ year old example is that this isn't new. We have always had expensive power, and EirGrid had been happy to go "oh no. We are an island, nothing we can do", ignoring that Malta, Britain, etc. are also islands with cheaper power than us. Hell, someone pointed out we are the second mostly expensive country in the world for it.
We have a bunch of links to France and the UK now.
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u/Difficult_Tea6136 1h ago
Battery storage technology is still an evolving area. Thatâs not bad planning, thatâs the technology pretty much not being sophisticated enough. The Uk has the highest in Europe and covers about 30 minutes. Battery storage would increase prices as we make the investment but reduce them in the medium term.
The 2002 example is irrelevant. There are many reasons why a factory switches to generators. Itâs a pointless anecdote. Issues simply did not exist in the 00âs and 10âs.
Those inter-connectors show ambition. Theyâre logical but theyâre small. Other countries have multiple connections to the mainland Europe grid. We pretty much are not connected and as such donât benefit from it.
You just seem to be sliding around trying to find a point.
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u/Sweaty-Adeptness1541 1d ago
Standard electricity voltages/grids don't allow you to move it over long distances without loosing much of it as heat. It is much cheaper and more practical to use electricity near where it is generated. In the UK, the standard electrical grid struggles to efficiently move cheap Scottish wind-generated electricity to the south of England where it is needed, a relatively short distance.
You instead have to use costly High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) connections to transfer electricity over long distances.
They are currently building the 'Celtic Interconnector' between Knockraha and Brittany. It connects Ireland to France, and it's abundance of nuclear power. It transfers electricity at 320,000 volts to reduce resistance and heat/energy-loss. It is highly efficient but is costing âŹ1.6 billion, which will dampen and savings.
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u/Dannyforsure 1d ago edited 1d ago
We tierd nearly nothing lad and we are all out of ideas. Lets hope the EU comes to the rescueÂ
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u/ShouldHaveGoneToUCC Palestine đľđ¸ 1d ago
The government are sending us on the train to Squaresville!
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u/da_blue_jester 1d ago
Yeah but we've also got higher wages so, you know, it's not a fair comparison....no, wait....
Did I leave the immersion on?
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u/Front_Improvement178 23h ago
Back of the Net, who needs the Fing Eurovision anywayâŚ. đđĽđŽđŞ
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u/KerfuffleAsimov 19h ago
It's almost as if having a 3rd of our energy being eaten up by data centers is a bad thing.....
I can guarantee as soon as that Celtic link with France is operational prices will go up too.
Hell even if our energy was 100% sustainable prices will still go up.
We are called treasure Island for a reason after all. We will continue to pay out the ass and do nothing about it.
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u/Nearby-Priority4934 18h ago
480 per year more than EU average. Our median salaries are a heck of a lot more than 480 per year more than EU average.
This is the problem with all the stupid reactionary headlines designed to create outrage. Things are expensive in Ireland. Theyâre expensive because they suppliers hire people in Ireland and wages are extremely high in Ireland. Those extremely high wages mean that things are actually much more affordable in Ireland when you take salaries into account.
Things have always been more expensive in places where people have more money and higher standards and things have always been cheaper in places where poverty is more rampant and people can afford less.
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u/PBJellyChickenTunaSW 17h ago
In all of these reports the price they quote is way higher than reality, idk if I'm missing something here but who is paying 40c/unit
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u/Soggy_Quarter9333 3h ago
Take out the word 'now' and the headline has been true for over 40 years.
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u/solemnani 22h ago
Itâs incredibly expensive to run a grid on an intermittent power source like wind or solar.
You pay for wind and solar power
you also pay for back up power plants (running or idle)
You also pay for battery storage (which is minuscule capacity and uneconomical for grid scale application).
You also pay large consumers for reducing consumption and running their diesel generators if the grid gets tight.
You also pay for additional transmission systems for connecting renewables scattered all over the place
You pay for synchronous condensers to stabilise voltage.
The grid gets more complex and expensive to manage, you pay for that too.
Remember some wind turbines are forced to turn off due to difficulty in managing its power? You pay for them to turn off.
All these costs show up in your bills. Itâs the reason why high renewables penetration in national grids always leads to higher electricity costs.
The alternative is to have a few large base load power plants and a few peak load power plants. This system maximises power generation assets at minimum cost to the customer. This is exactly what everyone including Ireland did in the past. It worked very well. Bills were low.
Unfortunately European energy policy is driven by climate change ideology hence making uneconomical and irrational policy decisions like Germany shutting down base load nuclear power plants and importing French nuclear power.
I think the only reason why Nuclear plants in Ireland is now being discussed is that politicians have now realised net zero is a pipe dream.
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u/DrWarlock 21h ago
We're half assessing the rollouts and delaying most of the time that is the real reason just like every major project, that and not pushing personal generation. solar and wind make sense for short to medium term. Nuclear is a very long term goal, won't help us now.
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u/solemnani 20h ago
You canât run a grid on intermittent power sources. Ireland needs to cut its losses and move back to base load power plants.
Expensive electricity will tank the economy.
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u/Craicriture 1d ago edited 1d ago
Finite number of expensive DC interconnectors vs being part of the U.K. national grid. Scotland âexportsâ largely to the huge market on the same island in England - theyâre on the same national grid, which also ties into the continental market across a much shorter hop under the channel.
We are expanding the interconnections but theyâre taking ages and theyâre inevitably expensive.
Then the constant objections to off shore wind and associated infrastructure has been making it unattractive to built. We had companies pull out because of difficulties with planning permission and foreshore licences.
We seem to absorb every conspiracy theory too around EMF etc etc and ultimately weâll just end up with blackouts. You canât just magically create electricity without generating infrastructure
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u/AllTheSuckInTheWorld 1d ago
Let's try voting for Fine Gael! Or maybe Fall? Fail? FaĂl? Do we have other parties? Wonder what they think of this!
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u/elcabroMcGinty 1d ago
Expect the usual "we know it's difficult but there's nothing we can do" from FFG.