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GENERATION & WHOLESALE MARKETS
June/July 2013 www.esb.ie/em
ESB TRADING RAISES OVER €10K
ESB TRADING is pleased to announce that, through the generosity and support of ESB staff, they have managed to raise €10,266 over the past 12 months. Two charities will benefit greatly from this fantastic amount raised: over €3,000 of the proceeds going to the Dublin Simon Community; and almost €7,000 to the Irish Cancer Society. Events organised included a sponsored cycle, table quiz, treasure hunt, pancakes and bake-off, Christmas ‘Sing for Simon’ on Grafton Street, and the Irish Cancer Society Shave or Dye. Thank you also to those who contributed to the Dublin Simon ‘Winter Woollies’ collection and the ‘Charity Shop’ collection for the Irish Cancer Society. The ESB Trading Team would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their generous donations and support.
BIZKAIA ENERGIA INVITED TO PRESENT PAPER
Gotzon Iragorri, Engineering, Planning and Projects Manager, ESBI FM España, has been invited to speak at the Global Asset Management Iberoamerica conference in Santiago de Chile. The conference is in June and Gotzon will present on good practices in the implementation of the PAS 55 asset management standard, with particular reference to the ongoing process in Bizkaia Energia.
ESB FISHERIES SUPPORTS PHASE TWO OF THE AARC PROJECT
IN EARLY MARCH 2013, passive integrated transponder (PIT) tagged salmon smolt were released from the ESB-oper-ated Parteen salmon hatchery as part of a EU-funded Atlantic Aquatic Resource Conservation (AARC) project. The project partners include University College Cork (UCC), The Marine Institute and ESB Fisheries Conservation. Inall,a total of 2,000 ESB reared salmon smolt were tagged with individually numbered electronic tags and were released into the Bunowen River (Suck catchment) on the Upper Shannon catchment. In addition, a further 2,000 similarly tagged smolt were released from the Inland Fisheries Ireland-operated Cong Hatchery (River Corrib salmon stock). These juvenile salmon will ‘imprint’ at the site and will return, as adult salmon to what they think is their natal river.
The purpose of this work is to compare the survival rates of these two groups of salmon. An automatic PIT tag counting unit is located on the river bed at Clonbrock Weir on the River Suck system (see photo), and by mid-April over 2,000 of the 4,000 tagged salmon smolt had migrated downstream and were counted as they passed over this unit. Once these juvenile migrate out to sea and return as adult salmon, the differential survival rates between the two groups will be also assessed, as they again pass over the automatic fish counting scanner during their upstream migration to the release site.
This project is in addition to previous AARC-funded Shannon salmon work, which resulted in some very interesting salmon genetics results. It is hoped that further work will be completed with Dr Philip McGinnity (UCC) and Dr N. O'Maoileidigh (MI) on Shannon salmon in the near future utilising the own resources of ESB. ESB Fisheries staff based in Parteen and at midlands locations were directly involved in the tagging of the fish and their subsequent movement to the rivers.
First wind farm in Northern Ireland with fibre optic telecommunication connection
CARRICKATANE WIND FARM project, located on the Derry/Tyrone border in Northern Ireland completed construction work in March 2013 and has since been handed over to ESB Generation Wholesale Markets’ Operation and Maintenance Group for the operational phase. The wind farm consists of nine Siemens 2.3MW SWT93 turbines with 63-metre hub height and 45-metre blades. ESB Asset Development developed the project with ESBI Wind Energy Solutions (WES) providing Owners Engineering Services with significant contributions from other departments within ESBI including the Civil, Building and Environmental Group (CBE), the High Voltage Group (HV) and the Asset Management Services Group (AMS). With the completion of the 21MW Carrickatane Wind Farm, ESB now have four operating wind farms in Northern Ireland which is a significant contribution to the company all-island renewable energy targets.
Located in a remote area of Tyrone, the wind farm relies on its communication links for the following reasons: 1) monitoring the wind farm performance through the turbine supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA); 2) the remote control of turbines; 3) transmitting export meter reading data of energy exported to the grid; and 4) site emergency communications. However, providing reliable communication links for these essential services to remote areas of the country has been challenging in the past. Wireless, satellite or GSM communication systems are normally the only options as fixed line phone and broadband links are rarely available. Wireless communication links are normally the preferred and most inexpensive options however are unreliable particularly during high winds and stormy weather, which of course is also the time when energy export is most significant!
Lessons learned from previous projects have shown there is significant risk with wireless communication connection methods specifically for the wind farm export meters. Eventually we reached an agreement with NIE to connect Carrickatane substation to the outside world and export meter via the external NIE fibre optic network. The fibre optic connection was laid underground in ducts with the NIE grid connection to site which removed the risk of loss of data if the wireless connection failed. This was a major achievement for the project team as it was the first wind farm of its type with an external fibre optic connection in Northern Ireland. It will also be a significant benefit to ESB over the lifetime of the project as it removes all risk of losing revenue data due to communication failure with the site.
During the early development phase of the project, while initial design details were being discussed by WES with NIE for the grid connection works, significant effort was made to get an agreement with NIE to upgrade the revenue meters (supplied by NIE) to more reliable communication means. Our objective was to mitigate the risk of poor data collection and breaks in revenue records collected from the site due to wireless connection. This risk would obviously impact on ESB's ability to control its revenue collection from the wind farms.
Annual G&WM Safety Awards
ONCE AGAIN it is thattimeof year to consider submissions for the Annual G&WM Safety Awards. The purpose of these awards is to give recognition to all groups, locations, projects and stations that go beyond their normal requirements to drive safety initiatives within their part of the organisation.
Submissions for the awards are open to all parts of G&WM and will be judged on the following criteria:
• Initiatives from SIP, project/site H&S plans
• Improved safety performance
• Excellence in reporting
• Incident investigation Communication of learning from incidents
• Improvement in risk assessment process
• Contractor management
• Safety involvement with local communities or external organisations
Submissions will be divided into categories including station, project, contractor, safety initiative and group. Merit awards will be given to the winner of each category and an overall winner will be selected from all submissions.
The closing date for submissions will be November 30th 2013 and the overall winner and merit awards presented in January 2014 at the annual G&WM Safety Conference. Further details on how you can make a submission, and to whom, will be communicated to all via email shortly.
So put your thinking caps on. Look around and identify something that is being done well, something that has brought positive change or something that has the potential to deliver real safety improvement and give it the recognition it deserves.
