BORD GÁIS ASSETS:The name may be associated with natural gas, but with the "Big Switch" campaign, Bord Gáis launched the first competitive offering for domestic electricity users in Ireland two years ago and announced itself as a full-scale energy provider.
It now has a rapidly growing electricity generation portfolio, is making significant investments in the renewables sector, and is increasingly involved in the research and development of new energy solutions.
Much of this activity is carried out by the company’s assets division, which was formally established in 2010 after the merger of the operations of SWS Natural Resources with Bord Gáis Investments. The division’s role is to operate and develop a balanced portfolio of assets that will help Bord Gáis meet current and future customer energy requirements.
“It started with the Whitegate Power Station, which is the most efficient combined cycle gas turbine electricity generating plant in the country,” says Bord Gáis head of new energy and technology Henry Smyth. “Last year Bord Gáis purchased SWS Natural Resources, a wind energy company based in Bandon in Cork. SWS has 220 megawatts (MW) of wind power already operational and about 500MW at various stages of development – some at the early stage and some close to completion. After that we have a whole portfolio of other activities looking at new energy technologies. The aim is to be involved in the development of technologies that we will be using ourselves.
“Very tight energy efficiency targets have been set by European Directives and these require year-on-year reductions in consumption. This is a big driver for every energy supplier at present. We also have to be mindful of our own national renewables targets which require 40 per cent of Ireland’s electricity to be generated from renewable sources and 12 per cent of our heating needs to come from renewable sources by 2020.”
Among the first initiatives in this area was the establishment of the €10 million Alternative Energy Research and Development Fund in 2008. “This is when we started looking into technologies that most utilities would have backed away from. The fund supports indigenous Irish companies and academic institutions in research activities in the areas we are interested in,” says Smyth.
One investment by this fund was in Wavebob, a leader in the design and development of environmentally sustainable wave energy conversion systems. Wavebob has developed a revolutionary wave energy conversion system design that can be tailored to meet the renewable energy needs of the global electricity marketplace.
“We wanted to explore the potential for ocean energy. This has slowed down a bit now in the Irish context and we are monitoring what’s happening in the market at present.”
Bord Gáis has also taken a share in tidal energy company OpenHydro and is at present planning a 100MW tidal power installation off the coast of Northern Ireland in a 50/50 joint venture with the company. “This is quite exciting for us,” says Smyth. “OpenHydro is a world leader in this technology and has already deployed a system off the coast of Brittany in a joint venture with French energy firm EDF. Tidal power is a great resource and these installations are below the surface. Unlike wind power, the supply from this is very predictable. You can almost predict what you are going to get down to a half hour basis over a 30-year period.”
Another project with great potential for the future is the generation of biogases. “We have funded research at UCC into the potential for biogas manufacturing in Ireland,” he points out. “It is possible to manufacture biomethane to the same standard as natural gas and it can be injected straight into the grid or used in transport. It turns out that the biggest fuel source in Ireland is excess grass. This has greater potential than all other wastes and slurries combined. At present biomethane has the potential to replace 7.5 per cent of our natural gas usage and it could technically replace up to 30 per cent of it. Currently it doesn’t stack up financially, but the technology is one to watch for the future.”
Another technology whose time has not yet come is high-altitude wind power. A research project carried out at the University of Limerick investigated using kites for this. “This could be a low-cost way of generating wind power. At high altitudes the wind speeds are much higher but the control systems are difficult.”
This commitment to research has seen Bord Gáis become a founding member of the International Energy Research Centre which is run from the Tyndall Institute in UCC and has been funded by Enterprise Ireland to the tune of €20 million. “This is quite an exciting group and it involves all the academic institutions in Ireland as well as a number of international partners,” says Smyth. “It will look at areas such as home area networks, building energy management systems in the cloud among others, and then consider opportunities to commercialise them. We have appointed a full-time RD manager who will work at the Centre along with industry partners such as IBM, Intel, Lucent, Alcatel and others.”
And the work doesn’t stop there. Also on the agenda for the assets divisions is the development of open-cycle gas turbine power generating plants which can run from cold within minutes in order to replace wind power when the wind drops. These plants will in turn require their own reserve of natural gas on standby and the company is looking at developing a dedicated storage facility in natural salt caves in Antrim for this purpose.
“We are active in the research and development areas and are moving to the demonstration of many of these technologies,” Smyth concludes. “The next stage will come when we hope to deploy them for the benefit of our customers and the economy.”
