Consumers to pay for storm damage to the electricity distribution network?

Dr Strangelove said:
I’d be happy if the standing charge for rural customers was increased. Specifically people who like to live hundreds of metres from their neighbours and rely on electricity wires strung on poles which are vulnerable to high winds.
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They have been paying for it because rural standing charges are already much higher than urban and have increased dramatically in the last 5 years. Most of the lines and poles were put in decades ago so have been long paid for. Alot of the standing charge money was used to put in all those power lines and digging up roads to connect up windfarms , very expensive. I have seen the km of power lines and large numbers of contractors and machines necessary for this. These guys were not stringing power lines on poles to rural houses
 
Dr Strangelove said:
Specifically people who like to live hundreds of metres from their neighbours
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I know some people like that, lobbied councillors and a TD to help with planning permission so they could build, complained about the cost to connect to the power grid, complained about mobile and broadband coverage and complaining now about how long they were without power.

I've heard the usual local councillor 'calling' on others to do something (the same one who was happy to help with planning applications and criticised the cost of connections).
 
mathepac said:
to hear you escaped the worst of the ravages, however, hundreds of thousands didn't and I believe they are entitled to be compensated for that and the chaotic recovery services ESB has offered but not yet completed. For the record, my power cut was a couple of seconds in duration.
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I respect, but don't share, your belief.
 
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Just watching prime time discussion about the storm and network damage and what should be done now. Its definitely the case that the grid wasn't being maintained and made resilient as some of the poles were 60 years old they have said. Replacing poles is not massively expensive but is time consuming and needs to be ongoing not waiting for a huge storm to knock them down. Also regarding resilience a risk expert said Ireland was not focussing on all the risks that can occur its not just climate , but financial and geopolitical (cutting of undersea cables) etc whereas all the emphasis is on climate to the exclusion of other risks
 
Asleep at the wheel? Negligent? Not doing the jobs they're appointed to? And getting paid handsomely despite all that. Time for some clawback methinks.
 
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joe sod said:
Also you would have to question all the money being spent on green energy and pso levys to pay for electric infrastructure for wind farms etc. Surely this should be spent on generators and the resilience of network.
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You're proposing a false dichotomy there. Greening the power system will also tend to make it more resilient — or, at least, increased resilience can be one of the objectives built into the greening of the power system.

One of the characteristics of the legacy power system that we have now is that electricity is generated in a relatively small number of places but at a very large scale in those places. A second characteristic is that there is limited focus on power storage — power is generated only when needed. These two characteristics mean that the power distribution system is critical and, if it fails — and particularly if it suffers multiple failures — the consequences tend to be severe and to affect a great many people. (As we have just seen.)

In a greener system electricity generation would be more dispersed, and there would be greater capacity for power storage. You'd still need a distribution system, obviously, but it would be much less concentrated and less intensive, and local failures in the distribution system would be less critical.

Much of the criticism of the ESB in this thread is to the effect that our electricty generation/distribution system hasn't been managed/maintained in a way that makes it resilient. The truth is that it wasn't even designed with resilience in mind, particularly resilience to weather events — up to now we've had what must be one of the mildest and most benign climates in the world, and our infrastructure hasn't had to cope with big freezes, hurricanes, wildfire, drought, heatwave, etc to any significant degree. Therefore it was never designed to cope with such things.

Over the coming decades the system is going to have to be signficantly reengineered to address the new reality. Simply sticking with the current fundamentals but beefing up the quality and volume of the plant and machinery is not the most intelligent, and probably not the most efficient, way to do that. A redesigned and renewed electicity system can be both more resilient and greener, and these two objectives probably reinforce rather than detract from one another.
 
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What is also a new development is the widespread planting of non-native forestry in the vicinity of poles, these were allowed to grow up too close to the poles.

The level of disruption to the network is greater than eg had the same storm hit in the 1990s.

It also makes the repair work more difficult, paths having to be cut through felled trees to get to the poles.
 
TomEdison said:
The truth is that it wasn't even designed with resilience in mind, particularly resilience to weather events — up to now we've had what must be one of the mildest and most benign climates in the world
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This is quite frankly nonsense. Wind speeds in Ireland are basically the highest in populated parts of Europe, see map.

To get back to the point at hand - hundreds of thousands of dwellings with power supplied by cables slung on poles are inherently vulnerable to these high winds.

Wind_speed_in_Europe_pillars.jpg
 
Dr Strangelove said:
To get back to the point at hand - hundreds of thousands of dwellings with power supplied by cables slung on poles are inherently vulnerable to these high winds.
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Yes that's true, but the issue was compounded by conifer forests planted too close to power lines , vegetation close to power lines not pruned back and 60 year old poles left and not replaced routinely, that's what the standing charge was supposed to pay for, surely 60 years of standing charges at now close to 300 euros per year should have been plenty to replace and maintain those rural poles. Those 60 year old poles were paid for in early 1960s yet they were still using them in 2025 !! The standing charge has increased dramatically and has not been used to resilient the existing network but putting by connecting all those windfarms.
There is also the issue of super profitable windfarms due to government subsidies not having to invest themselves into connecting their own windfarms and providing power to system when wind not blowing , all that cost is put back onto eirgrid, and guess what they are spending money on that rather than resilience of network. Remember we already have the highest electric prices in Europe
 
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Standing charges cover a lot more than replacing poles

And if we want our power lines underground, € 300 a year won't come anywhere near the cost of doing that
 
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Northern Sound News: Yesterday Feb 6, 2025 13:36
ESB's Powercheck website lists Tierworker, Drumalee, Swellan Lower, Gortahurk, Castleshane and Monaghan Town among those still without (power).
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Drumalee and Swellan Lower are both urban areas in Cavan town. Monaghan town is also obviously urban.

There go the claims that only rural dwellers are affected by this.
 
The suggestion that the power distribution network should be engineered to withstand such a storm is a nonsense. The cost of such a network even factoring repair costs would be astronomical and no one in their right might would ever consider it.

If people want to isolate themselves from paying a small share of repair costs, then perhaps we should implement a system where the property owner bears the full costs of restitution when a tree or structure on their property takes out a power line. The potential of a multi-thousand charge might finally incentivise people to take some personal responsibility and stop expecting state or semi-state bodies to pick up the tab.
 
Making property owners to bear the full costs of restitution for damage caused by any fallen tree or structure on their property would surely make the whole felling licence system impractical and create a free pass for wholesale and unnecessary destruction of trees and heritage buildings?
 
Leo said:
The suggestion that the power distribution network should be engineered to withstand such a storm is a nonsense. The cost of such a network even factoring repair costs would be astronomical and no one in their right might would ever consider it.
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The power distribution network, like all plant and machinery, consists of things that have a limited lifespan and will need to be renewed, replaced, etc in the ordinary course. The expected increased frequency of major storm events, even if it meant nothing else, certainly means that the renewal/replacement of the system will have to be accelerated. Its various components are not designed to withstand these conditions, so they won't. And, when they fail, they'll have to be replaced.

The question is not whether we should have a reengineered system, but what kind of reengineered system we should have. I agree with you that simply upgrading and/or duplicating all the components of the current system is very unlikely to be the optimal solution, economically or from and engineering point of view. Which means we're look at progressive renewal and replacement with a redesigned system.

Which will take a while, but it would be impossible to do it overnight, and madness not to do it at all.
 
I live in an area with a lot of coillte and private forestery, you couldn't make it up how badly managed the interaction of trees and poles is.

For example, I flagged an issue with esb about trees and chased, nothing was done until we got a power cut caused by said trees. When a more 'extensive' tree felling exercise was done it hasn't fixed the issue at all and was not in line with esb guidelines around how far trees should be from poles. The felling was done by contractors (on behalf of the esb) rather than esb crew if that made any difference. But if my experience is anything to go by, esb should more effectively manage things.

I'd also suggest that if private forestery is planted to close to poles, the owner of forest should be liable for costs if poles go down
 
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