Blackout fears ease as power plant back in action
The Whitegate plant, which has also been out of action, 'will return very soon'. Picture: Teneo
Fears of blackouts over the winter have eased somewhat with confirmation that the Huntstown gas-fired power plant returned to operation over the weekend.
Huntstown in Dublin, along with Whitegate in Cork, had been out of action due to mechanical faults, prompting the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) to seek an alternative €150m plan for mobile generators. However, when that plan was abandoned in August, fears of blackouts were raised.
Environment Minister Eamon Ryan and Taoiseach Micheál Martin have expressed confidence that power outages would be avoided with the resumption of service at Whitegate and Huntstown.
Ministers were briefed last week on emergency measures which may need to be introduced if demand outstrips supply this winter. These include warnings to large-consuming businesses and a push to ensure that premises which have back-up generators would use them in crunch periods.
A spokesperson for national grid operator EirGrid confirmed that Whitegate will resume "very soon".
"EirGrid can confirm that a unit at Huntstown generation plant that has been offline due to technical problems is now back up and running, providing an additional 404 megawatts (MW) of capacity to the Irish electricity market.
"The unit, which is owned by Energia and is located in North Dublin, returned on Thursday having been unavailable since last winter.
"A second generator, Whitegate in Cork, is making very good progress in fixing a technical problem and will return very soon. The plant, which is owned by Bord Gais Energy, has a capacity of 444MW and has been unavailable since last winter."
A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications said: "The regulator had recently advised that they had identified challenges to ensuring continued electricity security of supply. They are addressing these challenges.
“These challenges included lower-than-expected availability of some existing power stations, namely a gas-fired power station in Huntstown (Dublin) and another gas-fired power station in Whitegate (Cork) which were out of action. EirGrid have confirmed this weekend that the power station in Huntstown is now operational and is feeding electricity back into the grid.
“For context, peak national demand across the country at present is about 5,000MW (5GW). Bringing more than 800MW (over 15% of overall demand) back onto the grid is a very positive development."
