‘You see certain things before catastrophic power failures, and Ireland ticks all the boxes’

While a larger volume of energy coming from renewables such as wind is good news, the massive growth in energy demand from data centres and the simultaneous phasing out of old power plants may be more than our grid can manage

Moneypoint, a coal-powered station and the country’s dirtiest power plant, has had to fire up its generators far more frequently than in recent years

It was mid-morning on Monday, May 17 when power plants around Ireland were asked to immediately switch on any spare electricity generators they had. The message was clear: the country’s electricity supply was running out and the market would need all hands on deck if blackouts were to be avoided.

This so called “system alert” from the Single Electricity Market Operator (SEMO) was just the latest in a flurry of six over the last 12 ...