Airtricity is a wind farm operator in Ireland. The name is a portmanteau of air and electricity, but is also derived from the word Éire, Irish for "Ireland" (the company was originally known as Eirtricity). The company, established in 1997, has a generation capacity of 228 MW spread over the counties Cavan, Donegal and Sligo. It also operated the Arklow Bank windfarm, the largest wind farm at the time of its construction. Airtricity is 51% owned by NTR plc - the company that operates the East-Link and West-Link toll bridges in Dublin - and is run by Dr. Eddie O' Conner , former head of Bord na Móna. Airtricity is currently expanding operations into Scotland, England, and parts of the USA. Airtricity currently has several thousends of megawatts of capacity in the planning and construction stages.

Airtricity currently only sells electricity directly to businesses, through the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), as the Irish energy market has not yet been fully opened up to competition. Airtricity also supplies the incumbent state owned ESB with energy due to a lack of increased power supply in recent years caused by the closure of peat-fuelled power stations in the Irish midlands, supplied by Bord na Móna.

Wind generators on its wind farms generate electricity though wind power. Concerns have been raised that wind powered generation place a false economy on the electricity market; this is because as more farms are connected thus conventional methods of generation are required to "cover" in times of low wind speed. Visual pollution and the placement of wind farms is also a concern.

See Also

• List of Irish companies

External link

• Official site