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The Minister for Energy Pat Rabbitte T.D. has announced that he is establishing an expert panel chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Catherine McGuinness to oversee the preparation of reports on the best underground route options to compare with the Grid Link and Grid West high voltage power lines currently being designed.

The expert panel will be tasked with deciding terms of reference for comprehensive, route-specific studies of fully undergrounded options for both Grid Link and Grid West. The panel will be required to ensure that the studies are complete, objective, and comparable to similar studies of overhead options for the two projects, and will report to the Minister in that regard. Both the overhead and underground options will be published side-by-side, in objective and comparable terms, before proceeding to the next stage of public consultation.
The other members of the group appointed by the Minister are economists John FitzGerald and Colm McCarthy, Engineering Professor Keith Bell, University of Strathclyde and Dr. Karen Foley, Head of School of Landscape Architecture, UCD.

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It is also of note that the north-south connector project is excluded from the review on the basis that it is too far advanced.

It is understood that this will delay a planning application by approximately 18 months. Whilst many believe this is simply a delay tactic to get over the local elections it remains to be seen whether it will end up simply being lip service or prove to be a ‘game changer’ in terms of how electricity is transported in this country.

The deadline to respond to Eirgrid’s invite for submissions to the Stage 1 Report on the Grid Link Project (Leinster – Munster) has been extended until Tuesday, 7th January 2014 at 5pm.

An application by EirGrid to construct a 40 kilometres power line (110 kilovolts) between Clashavoon and Dunmanway in West Cork has been approved by An Bord Pleanala despite significant local opposition and the advice of their own inspector to provide one third of the line underground.

The powerline included 227 number structures, comprising 198 number double woodpole structures, nine number braced woodpole structures, and 20 number steel tower structures.

An oral hearing into the application was held in November 2011 in the Macroom Castle Hotel.

According to the An Board Pleanala Inspector the proposed power line runs across the rural landscape of west Cork “in a transitional area between the lush rolling pastures of central Cork and the more exposed uplands characterising the area west of Macroom”.

The An Bord Pleanala Inspector agreed that the argument raised by some objectors in relation to excessive power provision relative to demand had substance.  However Read the rest of this entry »

 Eirgrid are proposing a high voltage corridor, most likely overhead and covering at least 250km with pylons every 4km in an effort to address deficiencies in energy supply.

The proposed lines will go through Carlow, Cork, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow

Submission are being sought as part of a non-statutory consultation process from today and will run for an eight-week, Thursday 12th April 2012 to Friday 8th June 2012.

Further details including a map of the study area are available at

http://www.eirgridprojects.com/projects/gridlink/