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Asked by 536enea42 to Ray on 16 Nov 2014.
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Ray Alcorn answered on 16 Nov 2014:
There are certainly a lot of challenges individual to each one. Wind is more advanced than tidal which in turn Is more advanced than wave. The challenge for wind is in the operation and maintenance, tidal is step before in installation and wave is struggling with devices surviving. All of them have the challenge of costs
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Comments
Ashley commented on :
As Ray says wind is a more developed form of renewable energy. Over the years the technology has improved so now operation and maintenance is not as hard as it was. The big challenge in development today is actually buying turbines. So many countries are builing wind farms now that the companies making them just cannot keep up to demand. This means that a wind project can be delayed wiating for turbines to be delivered.
John G commented on :
The government set a target that 40% of electricity would come from renewable sources by 2020. That will nearly all be from wind with the rest made up by hydro from our rivers like Ardnacrusha on the Shannon or Pollaphuca on the Liffey. The rest will likely be biomass i.e. crops converted to energy like wood or gas recovered from our dumps. There is a tidal unit off the coast of Northern Ireland but there aren’t many suitable locations around Ireland. We have about 20MW of applications from wave. I would imagine less than 10% of that will be installed by 2020 (if any) on a commercial basis.
Laura commented on :
Realistically we need a combination of a number of different types of renewable energy. We don’t want to become too dependant on only one source, like we have with fossil fuels & oil. Also some renewable is complementary – solar tends to work better in summer whereas wind tends to work better in winter (there are exceptions).