I would also like to mention that an explosion of on shore windfarms may not be welcomed as well, as one would think.  Because lets face it, they can be seen from a fare distance away, they ain’t small!! I know EIS’s can be a right pain to get right, but they all come together to allow the authorities to make a better judgement of these turbines on the people and the land. Maybe offshore is a much better way to go? Sure there some proper winds out of the west cost.

Floating Wind Farms thats what we need, move them around over the contential shelf like the oil rigs do!

Good to see so much money will be invested though.

SOME €300 billion is set to be invested in European offshore windfarms over the next 20 years, according to a new report from wind turbine manufacturer Siemens.

The company, which recently signed contracts to supply up to 500 wind turbines for Dong Energy’s offshore windfarms in northern Europe, said there were existing commitments from investors for about 100 gigawatts (100,000 mega watts) across the continent.

At an installation cost cost of about €3 million per mega watt, Siemens said the total potential investment was in the order of €300 billion.

The company warned however that Ireland’s system of queuing projects for “gate” connections to the national grid meant Ireland would not be quick to achieve a significant share of the potential.

Currently the Republic has five offshore windfarms in the pipeline with a potential generating capacity of 2,655 mega watts, representing potential investment of almost €7 billion.

The next allocation of grid connections, known as Gate III, is due by next year. According to the Irish Wind Energy Association, though, Gate III is likely to give permissions for grid connections timed for about 2016.

Association chief executive Michael Walsh said some of the projects which might be approved under Gate III had been in the pipeline since 2004. To be in the pipeline since 2004 with a possible offer next year, and a potential connection in 2016, represented too much uncertainty over too long a time, he said.

Mr Walsh said, taking onshore and offshore wind proposals together, “there is about eight gigawatts in development, with a potential investment value of €16 billion to €18 billion”. About 3.9 giga watts were expected to be sanctioned by Gate III, he said.

A Department of Energy source acknowledged the difficulty but referred to plans by EirGrid to double the grid capacity under a €4 billion investment, by 2025.

The source also said it was planned to transfer control of the foreshore from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of the Environment in a bid to expedite the planning process for off-shore installations.

“We must upgrade the grid,” the source added. “There are parts of the country, usually where the wind is, where the network would not support the connection. Also we want to streamline planning and control so connections are ready and licences can be awarded like those for oil and gas.”
Source: IRISHTIMES

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HERITAGE & HABITAT: NOW THAT “development” is a dirty word in Ireland,  and building projects are too often seen in the light of destruction rather than construction, there is one kind of building project that is still a good thing – almost a morally good thing – and that’s bridges, writes GEMMA TIPTON

It’s easy to get carried away by bridges, but with Irish architects winning competitions to build bridges around the world, and global architects creating new ones here, it’s time we all started celebrating the not-so-humble bridge. Where does the morality come in? Can bridges be moral? If you can ascribe such qualities to inanimate objects, I believe they are – how else could you view such a means for bringing people together, closing distances, and linking communities, countries, and sometimes even continents? Take the Oresund, which you can see from the air as you fly into Copenhagen. It was opened in the year 2000, and spreads out like a dancing ribbon across the sea, connecting Denmark and Sweden for the first time since the Ice Age. Then there’s the Bosphorus Bridge that joins Europe and Asia. Venus Williams once played a tennis match here, against Turkish player Ipek Senoglu, it only lasted five minutes, but was the first tennis game in history to span two continents. Perhaps more excitingly (Europe and Asia already being attached by land elsewhere) is the proposed Bering Straits Bridge, which would link Asia, Africa and Europe with North and South America — meaning you could drive around much of the world. The Bering Straits Bridge proposition has been around for a while, and at the same time as the dreamers are planning their bridges, their perhaps more practical colleagues are thinking of tunnels. Tunnels also do their work of joining and bringing together, but they don’t seem to have the romance of bridges. Novelist JG Ballard put it best, when he was asked about the, then newly-opened, Channel Tunnel: he agreed it was amazing, but imagine . . . he said. Imagine if it had been a bridge.

In Ireland we have some pretty good bridges – although no world-beaters yet. Sir Edwin Lutyens’s plan to build the Hugh Lane Gallery as a bridge across the Liffey might well have been one, had it gone ahead. Instead, we have the beloved Ha’penny bridge spanning the Liffey, as well as, among others, O’Connell Bridge – actually two bridges side by side, and almost as wide as it is long. Further north there is the Boyne Bridge, which glows an ethereal blue at night, and, possibly the most beautiful of the new, soaring breed of bridges: the Foyle Bridge in Derry, which although it has to close in high winds, seems to be like an inspiration for the imagination to start to soar.

Opening later this year in this country is the Suir Bridge, which will help the N25 bypass Waterford. Regulars of Waterford’s traffic jams might find this thrilling enough on its own, but the Suir Bridge, designed by Spanish firm Carlos Fernández Casado, is a pretty glorious feat. The pylon holding the cable-stays took two years to build and is almost twice the height of Liberty Hall. Hang out with bridge-fanciers for a while, and you hear an awful lot of statistics and comparisons, as people wax lyrical about arches, spans, tonnes of reinforced concrete and numbers of rivets. Perhaps it’s their way of coming to terms with all that majesty and wonder.

Le viaduc de Millau France
Originally uploaded by filip42

It all starts to make sense when you come across a bridge like the Millau Viaduct. It’s the tallest in the world, taller than the Eiffel Tower, and it floats in the clouds as it crosses the Tarn Valley in France. It’s architect, Norman Foster, said he wanted it to have “the delicacy of a butterfly”, and people have said that driving across it is like “flying a car” – and they go there to do just that. Traveling to see amazing bridges has a distinguished history. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, and Thomas Telford’s Menai both drew the Victorian crowds when they were built – the Menai actually being a direct response to the Act of Union in 1800, as suddenly there was more traffic between the ports of Ireland and Wales. Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, has the additional, unfortunate distinction of being a spot for suicides, and plaques along the bridge display the Samaritans’ phone number. In 1885, however, a 22-year-old woman was saved from her plunge by her skirts, which caught the wind and acted as a parachute. Sarah Ann Henley lived on into her 80s.

While people travel to bridges, bridges have been known to travel too — famously London Bridge, which millionaire Robert McCulloch bought and transported, brick by brick, to Arizona in 1962. Ireland’s other newest bridge has traveled too: Santiago Calatrava’s Beckett Bridge floated, fully formed, into Dublin on a barge from Rotterdam earlier this year, and will be open for business in early 2010. I’m not completely convinced by the Beckett Bridge, the architect insists it looks like a harp, in deference to Ireland, but I think it looks like a great many of his other bridges – lovely, but by no means unique.

Meanwhile, Irish architects Heneghan Peng are building bridges abroad – one at Mittelrheinbruecke, in the Rhine Valley, on a site famed for its beauty; and the other, a footbridge for the 2012 London Olympics. Heneghan Peng’s German bridge is a thin sliver in the landscape, and like the best bridges, doesn’t detract from its setting. Some actually add to theirs – framing views in valleys, and giving new ones from their decks. One such will be Buro Happold’s winning design for the proposed Metro West across Liffey Valley – proving that sometimes man and nature can work in harmony. And finally, now is our last chance to see (for 2009 at least) the gorgeous, and a little scary, Carrick-a-rede rope bridge near Ballintoy, Co Antrim. It is taken down at the end of October/beginning of November every year, and goes up again in March.

Stunning And Romantic

Millau Viaduct , Tarn Valley: flying a car above the clouds in France.

Golden Gate Bridge , San Francisco: iconic, mist shrouded, it was once the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Oresund , Denmark/Sweden: connecting countries separated since the Ice Age.

Ponte Dom Luis: Porto, in Portugal, is famed for its bridges, but this one proves that iron work can be wonderful.

Clifton Suspension Bridge : turned Bristol into a Victorian tourist attraction.

Pont Neuf: the “new bridge” is now the oldest in Paris

Charles Bridge: begun in the 14th Century, a Prague tourist attraction

Rialto Bridge: all the bridges of Venice are romantic, but this one stands out.

Five-pavilion Bridge, Beijing: the Chinese are brilliant at bridges, and this one is very special.

Ponte Vecchio: the only one of Florence’s bridges not to be blown up by the Nazis. Hitler deemed it too beautiful.

Source: IRISHTIMES

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According to Dublin Bikes and the City Council the scheme is proving even more populour then they ever imagined it would be. I find it hard to believe why they did not put out more bikes in the first place. There are only 440 bikes for some 6000 people. But sure i can’t really comment as i havent had a chance to use one of the bikes yet.

Can’t wait to get in there give them a go and be able to get over to Fallon & Byrne for lunch in a jiffy, and back to college for the afternoon!

In my opinion a scheme that will most certainly be a success! With any luck if the popularity of the service last they will expand it to other parts of the city.  I also don’t believe we will see any of these bikes in the Liffy, but only time will tell!

Dublin City Council has said 6,000 people have subscribed to the Dublinbikes scheme which was introduced last weekend.

It said more than 5,000 people had registered for long-term hire cards and almost 1,000 for its 72-hour duration short-term subscriptions.

The council has 450 bicycles available from 40 stations between the Royal and the Grand canals.

Cyclists can register online for annual membership using a credit card at a cost of €10 or can pay with a credit card at 14 of the stations for a three-day €2 ticket.

Rental is then free for half an hour and costs 50 cent for the first hour, rising to €6.50 for four hours. The bikes are available from 5.30am to 12.30am.

The scheme is being funded by advertising agency JC Decaux in exchange for advertising space in the capital.
Source: www.dublinbikes.ie

The Dublin Bike Station on Dame Street

May it be really successful!

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Samuel Beckett Bridge Dublin

The first thing to strike me about the bridge is its size. Interestingly its not that visible from O’Connell Bridge but when you round the corner down to Butt Bridge and the other one that crosses to the CHQ Building, it is immense!

The bridge will have four traffic lanes, with cycle tracks and footpaths on either side. It will also be capable of opening through an angle of 90 degrees allowing ships to pass through. This will be achieved through a rotational mechanism housed in the base of the pylon.

From www.dublincity.ie

Now i have one issue with the bridge, it is called the Macken Street bridge but yet the road deck crosses the river in between macken street and the next street up from it, Guild Street I think it is.

This bridge will finally  re-create a link across to the south side of the city from the north side without having to travel all the way down past Capel Street to gain access to the college green area, when the bus corridor is in operation. As most of you will know as you drive into town down Dorset Street you cannot turn left once you pass temple street, thanks to the traffic management plan in operation in the city, because of the one way system in operation around the city people driving from the northside have to travel all the way to Church Street to cross the liffy to get to any part of the south bank of the liffey. This bridge although removed from the central part of the city, it will allow people to travel to parts of the city like merrion square and the like with much greater ease and a lesser chance of getting caught in the inner city traffic.

Another feature of note is the capacity of the bridge to carry luas tracks in the future. Finally some proper future planning by the city council in terms of transport! Mind you it could be a planning nightmare to get a luas up and down the keys there or even up macken street/guild street, but sure we shall see whether luas extensions will even continue thanks to the recession and its cuts in funding for infrastructure projects.

Dublin City Council have indicate that the Bridge will be open to city traffic in early 2010.

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