after 40 years generating energy

HUNDREDS ACROSS the New Ross area are bracing themselves for the closure of the Great Island power station.

After more than 40 years in operation, the ESB announced in June 2007 that Great Island was one of three power stations to be closed by 2010.

The closure of the oil-fired plant will affect hundreds and even thousands of people and business in the New Ross area, who rely on the plant for their livelihood. At the time of the announcement, an ESB spokesman said that its 65 staff members will not be forced to accept redundancy packages and would be retrained and redeployed within the company or accept voluntary redundancy packages.

Along with the Great Island Power Station, the others to be closed are Poolbeg Thermal, in Co. Dublin, which employs 120 people, and Tarbert in Co. Kerry, which has a staff of 130. The steam turbine at Marina in Cork, which has 43 staff, is also to close, but the larger gas turbine there will remain open.

In late November 2005 The ESB Power Station in Great Island was identified as one of the worst performing in the country at a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources.

According to the ESB, Great Island, along two power stations in Poolbeg and one in Tarbert, are the four stations with the poorest records of availability out of the company's 19 Irish stations. Bord Gais recently signalled their interest in acquiring the Great Island power station for use as a gas generating plant.

Great Island was the first oil fired station in the ESB's system to be built outside Dublin and Cork and it opened in 1967. At full output of 240MWs the station burns 1,500 tonnes of oil per day.

The station is located on a 168 acre site on the north bank of Waterford Harbour where the rivers Barrow and Suir converge. When unit 1 and 2 (1967) and unit 3 (1972) of the Great Island Generating Station were commissioned, the station supplied twenty percent of the electricity needs of the country.