[Article] ESB urges govt to back electric transport

[Colm R]

From RTE.ie


ESB Chief Executive Padraig McManus has urged the Government to promote electricity use in transport.

He told the Irish Management Institute's annual conference in Enniskerry that electricity is the cleanest and most efficient energy at the point of use.

He said that 85% of railways in Belgium are electrified, while the figure in Ireland is 3%.

[Colm R]

Very short article on RTE yesterday, however it does raise an interesting point. I also don't think its a coincidence that it comes hot on the heels of the annoucment made by the ESB a few days ago. That annoucment was about the ESB going green with a zero carbon foot print by 2035, and halving emmisions by 2020. They are going to invest 22bn in doing this.

To be honest, I am very encouraged by this and I wish the ESB well in what they do. Ireland is lucky as we do have massive potential energy around and in our island. Particuraly wave (think this is being trialled in Galway bay at the moment on a small scale) and wind. I think the article above is a gentle encouragement for Irish Rail to start doing this, as the ESB will need a large customer to recoup the cost of this investment.

And irish rail and the government will have to start to seriously think about electrifying the rail network and make itself not dependant on (Arabian) oil.

Peak Oil anyone!!

[James Shields]

Did anyone see the piece about the first tidal turbine arriving in Northern Ireland? This is another technology that could work well here and has the advantage of being more predictable than wind.

Further electrification would seem desirable, but asking IE and DoF to look at anything beyond T21 is likely to result in blank stares.

[Mark Gleeson]

He said that 85% of railways in Belgium are electrified, while the figure in Ireland is 3%.

But over 50% of passenger journeys are done on a electric train

[MrX]

Yeah, but those journeys are typically less than 15 miles!
In most other countries in Europe the vast majorities of intercity journeys are electrically powered.

[Donal Quinn]

i heard a stat that the Dart and Luas use ~18% of the states electricity capacity and that the metro and Dart and Luas extensions would effectively need a new power station to run them -

serious figures - anyone else hear of them?

[Mark Gleeson]

Dart uses at peak about 50MW average is a lot less, 12% of energy is reused as well

If you switch every single transformer on and load the system to 100% its 132MW, normally only 1 transformer is used at each substation, most have 2

A single 8 coach DART at 100% power demand, which is about 20 mph pulls about 2.8MW

National grid is good for 5000MW + so even adding Luas which uses less juice its well under 5%