We might as well try and catch the wind
Jerome Reilly

The radical Spirit of Ireland initiative aims to harness our abundant wind energy

Can the Irish economy be transformed forever by harnessing the wind? The Spirit of Ireland enterprise is convinced it can be done. The people behind the initiative believe they have uncovered the next big idea - one that could change this country forever, bring us energy independence within five years and make Ireland an exporter of power within a decade.

It would bring thousands of jobs within the construction phase, thousands more in local communities who would run and maintain the new energy production system, and make Ireland a cheap place to set up business.

The western seaboard from West Cork to Donegal would be radically transformed; a new brand of eco-tourism created, and our dependence on dirty and expensive imported fossil fuels ended forever.

Too good to be true? Maybe not. This is proven technology, not a "pie in the sky" invention or theory. It's working in other countries, most notably Japan, providing cheap and sustainable power.

What makes Ireland uniquely positioned is that its natural resources have the potential to make this technology work more efficiently here than anywhere else on the planet - and make it cheaper to build.

So how does it work? Two forms of energy production, wind farms and hydro (water) electricity production, are used to create power. We already have both working in this country, although not in tandem.

Wind farms already exist here and more are being built. We also have one hydro-electric plant at Turlough Hill in the Wicklow mountains.

The Turlough Hill project involved slicing off the top of a mountain. It consists of two connected reservoirs, one above the height of the other. Electricity is generated by releasing water from the upper reservoir, passing it through turbines connected to generators. This is done usually in the evenings when electricity demand is at a peak.

Overnight, when electricity consumption is low, the turbines are reversed and the water is pumped back up to the upper reservoir.

It works well, but it costs electricity to pump the water from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir. And you have to construct two fresh- water reservoirs under this model.

But, by bringing wind and water power together, you can get constant electricity - and more cheaply than you can by hydro or wind power alone.

The problem with wind energy - even on the west coast, which is among the windiest places on the continent - is that sometimes the wind doesn't blow. You have to find a way of storing wind power.

But by using wind farms to drive seawater up into huge storage reservoirs and then letting that water flow back down to the sea, driving turbines, you can create a constant supply of cheap power.

What makes Ireland such a good place to set up such a system is year-round wind, and the availability of dozens of "U-shaped" valleys all along the western seaboard which can easily be dammed.

Numerous bowl-shaped glacial valleys were carved out in the last ice age. Coastal erosion has left them facing the ocean. Many are within 1km-2km from the sea and, when dammed at the sea end, would provide very cost-effective and large storage reservoirs

These U- or bowl-shaped valleys are better suited for water storage than the V- shaped valleys found in Switzerland and other countries because they can lock in more water. V-shaped valleys require construction of larger dams for the same amount of storage.

Unlike Turlough Hill, which required the construction of two freshwater reservoirs, the ocean would serve as the lower reservoir -so only one, upper, reservoir would have to be built.

When dammed, a "head" or height of water above the power station of 100m-150m can be achieved. This would store large amounts of energy in a lake 2km-3km long and approximately 1km-2km wide.

Spirit of Ireland is planning to invest €10bn in the project, which would create tens of thousands of jobs, end our €3bn-a-year import bill for fossil fuels, and radically reduce our carbon emissions.

The brains behind the idea is the Trinity College Professor of Applied Physics, Igor Shvets, who said 50 potential sites for storage reservoirs had been identified. The plan, he said, would require two or three reservoirs and the erection of 2,500-3,000 wind turbines of 3MW capacity.

Spirit of Ireland has brought together engineers, academics, architects, geologists, hydro-geologists, environmental engineers, construction experts, lawyers and accountants, all working in a voluntary capacity.

The director of Spirit of Ireland is Graham O'Donnell, an electrical and electronics engineer and the entrepreneur who created Orbiscom, a successful electronic payments company. He has personally funded much of the research that has been undertaken so far.

He is fully confident of the technology and the economic benefits that will accrue. But he believes that, for the plan to work, local communities along the west coast would have to embrace the idea and become stakeholders in the project.

"It will mean that local communities will have to be full partners in this project. It will mean they will have to accept and embrace wind farms in their midst, and be part of the planning process from the start.

"There will have to be consultation and broad agreement at all levels of Irish society, starting with the local people," he told the Sunday Independent.

"Our proposal is that the wealth, in the form of energy, will be held in trusteeship by the people of Ireland. It will not be privatised," he said.

Technically, the plan is workable, but the greatest obstacle is likely to be political and bureaucratic inertia - and a tortuous planning process.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has been briefed and the idea has general cross- party support.

Lenihan was reportedly enthused, describing the proposals as the "Ardnacrusha for our time".

For more information, visit www.spiritofireland.org