Can the ESB and smaller players get us safely through winters 2004 and2005, asks Emmet Oliver

Concerns over the state of our creaking electricity network have reached such a stage that ESB chief executive Padraig McManus recently found himself having to reassure the public that their Christmas lights would twinkle as normal this holiday season.

Following almost catastrophic breakdowns in New York and London, the Irish electricity system, with its combination of ageing plant and near dominance by one company, seems a strong candidate for a breakdown.

Consider the arithemitc: The Republic has aproximately 5,150 megawatts of installed capacity. Last January the winter peak hit about 4,410 megawatts.

This might suggest the State has more than 700 megawatts to spare. Not so. The problem is we rarely get 5,150 megawatts on the system at any one time.

On average only 78 per cent of the capacity is available, so if winter 2004 is cold and rainy the prospect of blackouts is a real one, particularly if giant plants like Moneypoint, which generates an awesome 900 megwatts, and Poolbeg are not available for even a short period. As one observer said recently: "This country is lit up at the moment because of Moneypoint".

We will find out in the next few weeks. January and February are traditionally periods when the electricity demand peaks. It is understood that daily supply is often alarmingly tight. How tight nobody likes to state publicly. But it will be an achievement if Ireland makes it through the New Year and into February without blackouts.

Despite liberalisation of the electricity market the ESB still dominates the industry. Mr McManus candidly admitted recently that supply was very tight. Since liberlisation the ESB is precluded from building new generating stations. Consequently a lot of its plants are very old.

While McManus is worried like everyone else, the organisation charged with keeping the lights on is not ESB, but ESB National Grid.

This firm's assets are still owned by ESB, but a so-called "Chinese wall" is supposed to stand between the two companies. ESB National Grid has for some time been warning about the gap between the supply and demand for electricity.

Electricity demand - in line with general economic growth - has been growing in the Republic for many years. For a variety of reasons efforts to get supply to come into line with demand have been largely unsuccessful. The ESB has been scaled back and the likes of Viridian and Eon are operating in the market, but ultimately the question of whether the lights go out all over the country will depend on the ability of ESB plants to cope.

Two new plants sanctioned by energy regulator Mr Tom Reeves (one at Aughinish Alumina, the other being built by a consortium called Tynagh Energy) will not come on stream for several years.

So can the ESB and the smaller players get us safely through winters 2004 and 2005? The obvious problem is there are not enough power stations, but there is also the unsettling phenomenon of stations breaking down regularly.

This latter difficulty, known as "system availability", could be the biggest threat to the power system. In 2003 on average 22 per cent of stations were not available to generate electricity. Precisely which ones were "unavailable" has not been disclosed, but observers believe the ESB's older plants are the main contributors.

This constant need for maintenance and repair of the older plants is draining the electricity system. The shortage of generation plant is one thing, but the most recent report from ESB National Grid, acting as the transmission system operator, said this availability problem was even more pressing with current figures the lowest for a decade.

Ireland's 78 per cent availability figure is also way out of line with international standards. If the lights go out serious questions will be asked of the Government about why the power system was allowed to become so rundown.

So can we squeeze through? Well it depends on the performance of the plants and increasingly on the people operating them.

If power companies like the ESB improve on the current 78 per cent availability figure the system should be stable, particularly as the ESB has imported temporary generating plants into Ireland and signed a deal to take electricity from the Ballylumford station in Northern Ireland.

But if the power companies fail to curb breakdowns or "forced outages" there could be serious problems. The ESB National Grid estimates that if availability does not improve, even new plants like Aughinish and Tynagh will be insufficient to head off power deficits in future years.

The key consideration in the electricity industry is nearly always scale. A few small peat burning plants going off the system for repair work is hardly fatal, but losing the giant coal burning station at Moneypoint (capable of producing 900 megawatts of power) for a sustained period could be.