Madam, - Your excellent obituary of Dr Al Kelly, who was such an outstanding and pioneering engineer in the development of the ESB during the latter half of the 1990s, states that in the late 1940s "peat plant engineering was virtually unknown outside Ireland" and as a result "ESB engineering teams had to carry out a lot of original and innovative work" (The Irish Times, August 20th).
This was rather imaginative, as Mr A Monkhouse wrote a paper in 1935 for the Institution of Electrical Engineers on "Electrical Developments in the USSR", in which he described the 17 existing 1 million kw Russian peat power stations. A further 24 were planned for erection by 1937. These stations were using some sod peat as fuel but increasingly using milled peat.
Mr Monkhouse read his paper in London in 1935 and came to Dublin later that year to read it at the headquarters of the Irish Institution of Civil Engineers in Dawson Street, Dublin. I was present on that occasion (with some hundreds of other engineers). It is of interest to know that he stated in the paper that "it is felt by the engineers of Glavenergo [ Russian ESB] that the Shirstinev method of burning milled peat containing up to 50-52 per cent of moisture will be widely used in future". All the existing Irish peat power stations use milled peat.
In 1936 milled peat was used in a small 500kw power station to supply power to Lullymore peat briquette factory in Co Kildare, so it is obvious that there was a very considerable amount of data available abroad, and in a small way in Ireland, to enable the ESB to use peat for power generation before 1940. - Yours, etc,
JAMES MARTIN,
Chartered Engineer,
Rathdown Avenue,
Terenure,
Dublin 6W.