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Presumably EU internal market rules mean that an Irish utility selling into the UK market has to be granted the same price and access terms as a British utility, and so the bigger question becomes whether the feed in tariffs are high enough to cover at least marginal costs.

Are there any restrictive rules on who gets FITs and access and who does not?  No doubt British baseload suppliers will start complaining if their plants are run at even less capacity to facilitate Irish wind energy?

It seems to me an EU Supergrid doesn't make sense without an EU market access (and perhaps pricing) policy.

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by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Sat Jun 25th, 2011 at 05:47:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Covering marginal cost does no good ~ its got to contribute to the capital cost.

How dependent it is on how effective the UK promotion scheme still depends on what share is going to be exported. That is, a less than ideal promotion scheme in the UK would still be some extra revenue, on top of domestic revenue. After all, part of the time that the wind is blowing well in Ireland, it won't be blowing as well in the UK ~ including both weather systems passing through and diurnal wind patterns ~ especially offshore wind in the North Sea off the east coast of Scotland.

At the notional 50% given in the story, either substantial capital subsidy or firm feed-in tariffs on exported wind would seem to be required ~ and from the story, that seems to be what is on offer.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sat Jun 25th, 2011 at 07:25:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There is some kind of EU pricing policy, as Sweden was recently due to EU regulations forced to split the electricity market into four geographical parts. I only know this because I was looking to switch company and now you have to check the prices in your region. So I do not know what regulations or how they are supposed to help anything.

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by A swedish kind of death on Sun Jun 26th, 2011 at 04:51:09 AM EST
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