Saturday, June 26, 2021

Solar Power in Ireland

 Is it worth installing solar power in Ireland? Or is it more efficient to build the solar power someplace with more kilowatt hours per panel per year and transport the electricity from there?

BORD GÁIS ENERGY ANNOUNCE NEW DEVELOPMENT OF 11 SOLAR FARMS

"Obton’s aim is to expand their portfolio and solar energy products here to reach a total capacity of 1 Gigawatt (GW) by 2026, their venture will see the total value of its portfolio and projects here reach an investment of €750m in the sector.

The eleven solar farms will have the capacity to generate up to 118MW of power and are a part of the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS).

These facilities will be located in 8 counties and will include sites in Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Longford, Galway, Offaly, Meath, and Tipperary."

There are three questions here. 1. Amount of power gotten  2. Losses in transmission. 3. Cost per kwh
1. Ireland does not get much sunshine

these counties get about 2.7KWH. In Morocco this figure is double

2. Transmission losses. Ireland to Morocco is about 4000km. Losses per 1000km are about 3%. Which is small enough to make transmission feasible.

3. Cost. Median wage in Ireland is €36,095 and in Morocco is about 6000. Engineers are going to be a lot more similar than this. But much of the standard cleaning and basic maintenance of panels will be much cheaper in Morocco. 
Land in the Sahara is much cheaper than in Ireland so the land costs will also be less.

We might want to keep Irish money in Ireland. But if we are getting close to twice the power for less cost that gives us lots of the spare money to keep in Ireland.
Tunisia will sell solar electricity at 0.036 Euro per kwh . Irish Electricity unit price 21.24c per kWh. There is of course an issue with when the sun shines and electricity reliability. Though if we are going to have a percentage of our electricity from solar surely it should be from a much cheaper source even if that is further away?