Airtricity

Airtricity is a wind farm operator in Ireland. The name is a portmanteau of air and electricity, but is also derived from the word Éire, Irish for "Ireland" (the company was originally known as Eirtricity). The company, established in 1997, has a generation capacity of 228 MW spread over the counties Cavan, Donegal and Sligo. It also operated the Arklow Bank windfarm, the largest wind farm at the time of its construction. It opperates both north and south of the Irish border. Airtricity is 51% owned by NTR plc - the company that operates the East-Link and West-Link toll bridges in Dublin - and is run by Dr. Eddie O' Conner, former head of Bord na Móna. Airtricity is currently expanding operations into Scotland, England, and parts of the USA. It currently has several thousands of megawatts of capacity in the planning and construction stages.

Wind generators on its wind farms generate electricity though wind power. Concerns have been raised that wind powered generation place a false economy on the electricity market; this is because as more farms are connected thus conventional methods of generation are required to "cover" in times of low wind speed. Visual pollution and the placement of wind farms is also a concern.

Withdrawal from domestic and large commercial market

Airtricity has about 8,000 domestic customers, but over recent months it has been forced to buy extra power from the ESB to supply them as well as its small and medium-sized enterprise clients. The company wrote to customers over the weekend advising them that they needed to find a replacement supplier or face considerable increases in prices. It blamed the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) for "regulatory failure".

In order to meet the demand of its customers, Airtricity currently supplements the electricity generated at its wind farms by buying so-called "top-up" power from other sources, mainly ESB. This "top up" power can be very expensive.

"Airtricity has been subjected to high and volatile costs of power since August last year," the company said. "These costs averaged 43 per cent over the costs originally projected. Airtricity cannot continue to absorb these costs."

The performance and availability of ESB stations has also been criticised by Airtricity.

The company also said a moratorium on wind farm connections to the national grid had damaged the company and slowed down its development.

Last night, the CER rejected these claims, but said that it was conducting its own investigation into "why electricity market prices were higher from August 2005". This report is expected to issue later this week.

It is understood Airtricity has been engaged in robust discussions over recent weeks and that legal arguments have taken place.

A CER statement said: "The commission is examining in particular the impact of international fuel price increases and the effect which the availability of all generating stations on the system may have had on prices."

The CER also rejected the Airtricity claim about the wind moratorium.

"This moratorium, which was lifted in early 2005, affected only the issue of new connection offers. Airtricity had wind connection offers before the moratorium for four onshore wind farms totalling about 100 megawatts which were not effected by the moratorium, but which they are only now constructing."

The row between the CER and Airtricity comes as the Government considers the future of the whole energy sector.

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Airtricity".