Madam, - As an energy executive in America, I read with great interest and concern the article "Regulator halts wind power links to grid" (December 4th). The growth of wind energy and other sustainable resources has shown Ireland's leadership in answering the call for more electricity through developing environmentally friendly technologies.
Open and fair competition seems to be leading the way for new innovations, not only in development of new energy projects, but in broadening the sources of energy that the Republic can draw upon for its continued economic growth.
With the ESB controlling the National Grid, and also with the ESB stating in its press release of July 28th that Hibernian Wind Power aims to control one-third of the renewable energy market by 2005, one cannot help but draw an inference that anti-competitive forces are at work. The success of independent firms such as Airtricity creates the winds of change that monopolists find difficult to adapt to.
In understanding the technical details of wind energy interconnection to the National Grid, and the intermittent nature of wind energy, typically one would expect that the National Grid had performed substantial generation planning studies prior to the issuance and acceptance of the alternative energy requirement proposals now being built, and that the issues involving technical performance standards should have surfaced well before planning and regulatory permissions were granted in the first place.
It is my hope that given the issues above, electricity regulator Mr Reeves will continue to pursue the course of free market competition, developing Ireland's sustainable and non-polluting energy resources, with due concern for National Grid reliability. But it is important that the reliability "trump card" not be utilised to buy time for the incumbent utility, but be based on actual, demonstrable technical facts.
Competition has paved the way for Ireland's new, sustainable energy future. It's important to keep those forces moving in the right direction. - Yours, etc.
CHIP O'DONNELL, 6384 Grand Vista Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA