https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environ ... -1.3312015



Poolbeg at capacity, naturally former IT editor Kevin O'Sullivan feels the need to focus on the issues in commisioning and a spurious claim


rather than this



amazing that John Gormley and his pals have done nothing to capture this free energy

The development at the old glass bottle site should be able to make use of some of the district heating potential. But retro-fitting existing housing stock to run on the hot water is unlikely to be cost-effective.

As pointed out earlier in the thread, the nearest human habitation is 800m from the incinerator.

Every other European country can do it ( I assume at an economical rate). I dont think its economics, I think it political

I have read up on this. It is an engineering problem.

It is quite easy with new build.

It is very hard with existing dwellings as you would have to dig up front gardens and retrofit central heating systems to work with the district heating system.

I'm sure you're right. My point is more that instead of fighting the inevitable tooth and nail for years they could have accepted and planned for it.

The whole thing was delayed by over a decade of planning and regulatory messing. This included a two-year periodwhen the Minister for Environment sat on an application by DCC for a foreshore licence.

You can see why people building houses didn't bank on the district heating ever happening.....

The Poolbeg Plume Plotter

http://plumeplotter.com/poolbeg/

All seems to in order there or am I missing something?

It used Modelling rather than actual data

Unfortunately Covanta have no intention of releasing meaningful data on the plume emissions. The plume plotter just shows where those unknown emissions are right now.

http://www.thejournal.ie/poolbeg-incine ... 7-Jun2017/

There's some data available: https://www.dublinwastetoenergy.ie/Abou ... sions-Data

With a note that


Not realtime for the emissions at this point, just at least daily averages.

Ultimately DCC should have little or nothing to do with building or operating the district heat system; one of the existing utilities would presumably be granted a license to build and operate it. Bord Gais would be the obvious candidate in terms of expertise given that they operate both the gas and water networks so they know how to move stuff around in pipes, but I wonder if their gas assets would be a conflict of interest — given that district heat is designed to be super cheap they would have an incentive to make it not work so that it doesn’t affect gas sales in the relevant areas. SSE are investing in infrastructure now so they could be a candidate.

Anyway nothing will happen until a sufficiently large development is launched in the area. Only makes sense at scale.

Bord Gais actually already operate some district/building heating; I was a customer of Bord Gais Heat for a while. Most frustrating consumer experience I’ve ever had; I think it was just one person in there dealing with it. Very cheap when it worked, mind you, cheaper than gas. (I think it was using surplus heat from an office building with thermal solar panels). There seem to be a good few operators of apartment complex-scale district heating systems, tho.

As mentioned above, the glass bottle site would be a great place to use heat from the incinerator, assuming it ever gets built.

Wow, I had no idea district heat existed here already. Can't find any mention of it. Maybe they stopped?

The Ballymun flats all had underfloor heating provided by district heating. My wife grew up drying her clothes by spreading them on the floor and cooling down their flat by opening windows.