Viridian Group has announced the completion of its second electricity plant at Huntstown in North Dublin. The power station was commissioned on schedule and started supplying the national grid last week.

Huntstown 2 is a Mitsubishi designed high efficiency Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) unit generating 401 megawatts and represents Viridian’s second major investment at the North Dublin site, following the commissioning of the 343 megawatt Huntstown 1 generation plant in November 2002.

Harry McCracken, Group Managing Director of Viridian Power and Energy, said: We are particularly delighted that Huntstown 2 has been completed on schedule and on budget and as planned, in advance of next month’s opening of the all-island Single Electricity Market.

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"Huntstown 2 represents a further major investment by the Viridian Group and our second major investment in electricity market to around €500 million."

Total generation capacity at Huntstown is now sufficient to meet the energy requirements of approximately 450,000 homes and is equivalent to around 22 per cent of the Republic of Ireland’s electricity requirements.

Welcoming the completion of Huntstown 2, Dermot Byrne, Chief Executive of Eirgrid, said: "The addition of 400 megawatts of generation capacity at the Huntstown Plant will contribute to security to supply in the years ahead and should also make a positive impact in terms of increasing competition in the soon to be launched Single Electricity Market.

"The delivery of new power plants on schedule is very important and we congratulate the developers on the opening of this unit. I wish them every success in the future operation of what we hope will be a flexible and highly reliable generation plant."

(JM)