County: Longford
Fuel Type: Peat
Capacity: 100MW
Status: Inactive
Commissioned: 2004
Decommissioned: 2004
Lough Ree Power was a milled-peat burning station located on the bank of the River Shannon, next to the village of Lanesborough.
Commissioned in 2004 the 100 MW-generating station replaced the nearby ageing 85 MW Lanesborough Power Station. The station was officially opened by the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen on Thursday, 21st April 2005.
Read more about the official opening in the May 2005 edition of ESB's Electric Mail newspaper.
Lough Ree Power had a 15-year contract to burn peat supplied by Bord Na Móna. The station was ESB's last peat-powered generating station when it ceased exporting power to the grid and closed on 18 December 2020. The station used Foster Wheeler’s Circulating Fluidizing Bed technology to burn peat in an environmentally-friendly and efficient way. Over 37% of the primary energy supplied from the fuel was converted to electricity and supplied to the national grid.
The plant used a combination of boiler design and the lime inherent in the fuel to reduce emissions of both nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides to below EU limits. Also, modern stack-cleaning technology/high-efficiency bag filters meant that dust emissions were drastically reduced.