Moneypoint power station () is

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

's largest electricity generation station (output 915 MW) and only

coal-fired power station A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...

. Commissioned between 1985 and 1987, it is located on the

River Shannon The River Shannon ( ga, Abhainn na Sionainne, ', '), at in length, is the longest river in the British Isles. It drains the Shannon River Basin, which has an area of , – approximately one fifth of the area of the island of Ireland. The Sha ...

near

Kilrush Kilrush () is a coastal town in County Clare, Ireland. It is also the name of a civil parish and an ecclesiastical parish in Roman Catholic Diocese of Killaloe. It is located near the mouth of the River Shannon in the south-west of the county. ...

, County Clare. It was constructed at a cost of more than £700m in one of the largest capital projects in the history of the state. The station operates largely on

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead ...

, making it both unique in the context of Irish electricity production and the country's single largest emitter of

greenhouse gases A greenhouse gas (GHG or GhG) is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range, causing the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are water vapor (), carbon dioxide (), methane ...

. It is capable of meeting around 25% of customer demand across the country. It has two

Heavy Fuel Oil Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) is a category of fuel oils of a tar-like consistency. Also known as bunker fuel, or residual fuel oil, HFO is the result or remnant from the distillation and cracking process of petroleum. For this reason, HFO is contaminate ...

(HFO)

storage tank Storage tanks are containers that hold liquids, compressed gases (gas tank; or in U.S.A "pressure vessel", which is not typically labeled or regulated as a storage tank) or mediums used for the short- or long-term storage of heat or cold. The t ...

s with a capacity of 50,000 tonnes which can be used as a back-up fuel if required. Three

Brown Boveri Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 197 ...

four-cylinder, single-shaft impulse reaction turbines are directly connected to three generators which generate the power. The steam is generated by three Foster Wheeler two-pass boilers, which convert water into high pressure steam by combustion of the coal. The power station chimneys, at 218m, are the tallest free-standing structures in Ireland.

History

Moneypoint was under construction from 1979 to 1987. Before its construction, Ireland depended heavily on imported oil for its energy. The 1970s sharp increase in oil prices over a short period of time led the government and the

Electricity Supply Board The Electricity Supply Board (ESB; ga, Bord Soláthair an Leictreachais) is a state owned (95%; the rest are owned by employees) electricity company operating in the Republic of Ireland. While historically a monopoly, the ESB now operates as ...

to choose coal as a fuel, as it was seen as a plentiful resource with a stable price. A

flywheel A flywheel is a mechanical device which uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy; a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed. In particular, assu ...

synchronous condenser In electrical engineering, a synchronous condenser (sometimes called a syncon, synchronous capacitor or synchronous compensator) is a DC-excited synchronous motor, whose shaft is not connected to anything but spins freely.B. M. Weedy, Electric Po ...

to stabilize the grid was ordered for operation at Moneypoint by 2022. In 2019, the government launched its climate action plan which included a commitment to end the burning of coal in Moneypoint by 2025, and replace coal-fired generation with "low-carbon and renewable technologies". One option being explored is a 400 MW floating wind farm with an onshore hydrogen facility.

References

External links

Official Information Sheet (PDF)Flickr photos
Coal-fired power stations in the Republic of Ireland {{Powerstation-stub