EirGrid reports outages at three power plants

EirGrid has confirmed that three power stations are currently temporarily out of action, with the plants expected to be back up and running in the coming days.

The national grid operator said there had been a “number of forced outages at generation plants in recent days”.

The outages affected Tarbert 3 power station in Co Kerry, Great Island station in Co Wexford, and Moneypoint 2 in Co Clare.

Aghada 2 power plant in Co Cork has also “been operating at a reduced capacity” since Thursday, an EirGrid spokesman said.

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The spokesman said the Tarbert station is expected to be back running by Monday, with Great Island and Moneypoint stations to be back in use on Saturday. The Aghada station in Cork is expected to be back running at full capacity by Friday night,he said.

Whitegate plant in Cork, which has been out of action for several months, is due to be back in operation next month, the spokesman said.

The latest problems with stations come a matter of weeks after it became known that contingency plans had been drawn up to deal with major pressures on the system. These included provisions that data centres and large energy users would be the first to be taken off the national electricity grid, in the event of shortages.

The plan laid out a hierarchy of needs for blackout scenarios, which would prioritise private homes and healthcare settings.

Since then, there had been claims that the situation was improving with Huntstown power station in Dublin was also brought back into operation this month.

The Government has repeatedly sought to reassure the public that there will be no electricity blackouts this winter, despite what senior Ministers acknowledged are significant capacity pressures.

In late September Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he was “confident” there would be no electricity blackouts over the winter months. His comments came after Minister Eamon Ryan said in an interview that he could not be “absolutely certain” there will be no power outages.