Dr Paul MacArtain of Dundalk Institute of Technology explains why it's time to embrace the new tech that will power the nation
From mobile phones and music streaming to video conferencing and voice assistants, recent technological breakthroughs have dramatically changed the way we live. Other technologies have also emerged in the past 20 years that have changed the world as we know it in a more visual way, namely the Irish landscape.
One of the changes we are seeing is an increasing number of wind turbines on our hills. Wind energy has had a major impact on Ireland, generating 34% of our electricity in 2022, but unless we understand the technology, turbines can be seen as alien or detrimental. So why do we need wind energy and why has it had such an impact on Ireland? To answer this question, we need to take a step back and see where we need energy in our lives.
As soon as we realised that our electricity, transport, heating and industry needs were belching out harmful greenhouse gases, thoughts began turning to different ways to generate energy. They used to be called alternative energy sources, yet humans were using wind, water and bioenergy well before coal or oil were extracted from the ground. How many villages in Ireland have a mill on a river or an old windmill tower? How many people simply burned sticks on a fire to keep warm? Natural energy sources have been used since the start of civilisation and will always be there.
Ireland doesn’t have any major reserves of oil or coal, and the one gas field we have, Corrib off the Mayo coast, will run out in the next ten years. So where do we get our coal, oil and gas to burn? Unfortunately, it’s nowhere local. The closest oil field is in the North Sea, off the Norwegian coast, and most of our liquid fuel comes from Russia via the EU or the Middle East. The coal is from Europe, Russia or South America, and the gas we use comes from the North Sea or Russia as well. In reality, we’re bringing the energy to cook our dinners, heat the house and drive petrol and diesel cars from thousands of kilometres away.
Do these countries give it to us for free? Of course not. As with any commodity, if everyone wants it and someone is selling it, the price will go up. And up. Ireland must compete on international markets for fuel with other bigger and more powerful countries and has to pay the asking price. Ireland pays more than €1million an hour importing fossil fuels. Think about it logically: our country is dependent on an energy source that we don’t have, costs us billions to buy and is damaging our environment. That's not very clever, is it?
What do we have in Ireland? Do we have any resources that we could possibly use to turn on the lights, heat the house and drive the kids to school? Thankfully, the answer is yes. The west of Ireland and western Scotland have the highest average wind speeds of anywhere in Europe. After all, there’s nothing in the way between Galway and America. No hills, no trees, nothing to slow down the wind.
The first step in capturing this renewable resource is building wind farms and installing wind turbines. In simple terms, a wind turbine is a tower with a generator on top. The wind turns the generator and generates free electricity. Free electricity, without the need to burn fossil fuels or purchase them on a continual basis, because the wind is free and in endless supply.
That’s not to say that wind turbines aren’t expensive. The average onshore turbine costs around €4 million. For that you get a piece of infrastructure that stands up to the harshest weather conditions - rain, hail or snow - for up to 30 years. Modern wind technology is so advanced that a turbine knows what to do every few seconds without someone manually controlling it and it will constantly adjust to face the shifting prevailing wind to make as much electricity as possible. And more importantly, it doesn’t need anyone to buy fuel and feed it, unlike a fossil fuel system.
It’s not all good news though. The wind doesn’t always blow and if the wind blows strongly at night and everyone is asleep, demand is low and we have nowhere to store it. This resulted in Ireland turning off 7.5% of our wind energy in 2021 because there was nowhere for it to go. In future we’ll be moving this energy to heat and transport which is why people will see advertising around home insulation, heat pumps and electric cars, but again the reason is that we’ll be using Irish resources.
Like any new technology, such as the internet, microwaves, televisions and even rural electrification, some people are naturally skeptical and afraid of change. Education is the tool to break down the barriers to understanding why more wind farms are needed so urgently in Ireland. Now you know why the sight of wind turbines is becoming increasingly common, hopefully you will see this as another new technology for modern life.
Dr Paul MacArtain is Head of the Department of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering at Dundalk Institute of Technology. He also leads the Learn Renewables education programme, which runs wind energy courses for primary and secondary schools
